Daniel vs Monday P-day

Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:58:27 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

Happy Monday P-Day! My email comes early this week because P-day has officially been moved to mondays.

We went to the easter pageant two more times since I got here! Thursday and Friday.

Thursday was cool because we went with a part member family that we're not really teaching... But we talked to him on the way home and he agreed to pray about taking the lessons! Hopefully he will. He's whats known as a "Dry-Mormon" - meaning: Not baptised.

Then Friday was crazy! We had to fill the font for another missionary's baptism because he was at some meeting, then we went to dinner then we went biking outside, ran into one of our investigators on his golf cart, he's HOA president so he just rides around, and he said, "yeah I want to go tonight." Its like 6:00 at this point on friday. So the pageant is already packed and we said ok, but we gotta leave right now and we probably wont get good seats. He demanded good seats... So he calls the Mesa Temple Visitors center, talks to an old lady missionary and she says she'll get him a seat because he walks with a crutch. We go home to get in suits and he goes home to get ready. Its like 6:15 and he agrees to be at our house at 6:25. 6:45 rolls around and he pulls up. We finally leave, and then he doesn't have his handicapped parking thing. So we go get that, and get to Mesa, the long way, and then get a parking spot... finally. Its like 7:45 when we come up to the pageant. The pageant starts at 8 and people have been sitting since 4:30. He walks in the visitors center and the Sister says, "you were supposed to be here earlier!" and he explains, and she goes up to the missionary seating and gets him a seat right up front. We had to stand off to the side. But it was so funny. And you really have to understand that this thing is PACKED. Especially the last friday of the show.

Anyways. Saturday was boring. We got anti'd and I got mad. I totally anti'd him back, and then realized what I was doing and then left. I dont like to deal with that. ps, NO ONE tells me that the Bible says that "the bible is the infallible word of God" and doesn't show me where. But I dont want to get into that story.

Sunday was easter! I'm greeting people at church, showing myself off, and then they pull me and my companion up into the ward choir. I hear the song one time, and then go back and sit down. So I had to sing in church. But anyways. Church was fun.
We had easter dinner at our Ward Mission Leader's house. I got to know him. He's awesome, and we're expecting big things for that ward!

... Then I woke up this morning. Monday P-days are weird.

LOVE ELDER FELLER!

We heard if you surround a scorpion with fire it'll stab itself in the head. It just ran into the fire and got burned.

April, 2011.

I've been learning piano!

Just kidding! The church has fake pianos here.

Daniel VS Transfers!

Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:33:16 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net


Hello from Queen Creek!

Yes. I got transfered again. Two six week areas! Man. But whatever. I keep telling myself that its a sign of lack of faith to be too disapointed and complain about leaving. Gilbert was fun and a learned alot. I'll miss Elder Parrott. We didnt even get our T-Shirts in time! Ahhh.

So not too much happened this week.

We biked up to Jake's house because his fellowship is in China. We read from the Book of Mormon with him. It went really well. We learned he doesnt read too well which is probably why he hasnt been reading on his own. We read 3 Nephi 27 with him and explained the whole thing. He really enjoyed that and I think it helped him a lot.

That night... Transfer calls. Every monday before transfers the zone leaders get a call from the APs, who call the District Leaders who call us. Elder Gunter called me monday night and said I was getting transfered! Nooooo!

Then tuesday. We spent tuesday packing and saying bye to people. Then at night we went to the Easter Pagent with Chuck! And his girlfriend came too! We had to call ahead on monday to get seats. Thats right, missionaries can reserve front row seats! Its pretty sweet. Oh, thats a funny story too. Elder Parrott called on monday to reserve the seats, and he talked to a sister in the Mesa Mission at the visitors center. And he went through it all "2 investigators, 2 fellowship, and me and my comp ... oh you can only reserve seats for you and your investigators? ... can you put us down for 6 anyways? ... Thanks!" Then she asked if we were in the Mesa Mission and he said "No way! Tempe!" he almost said "Tempe Baby!" And she laughed and said sorry. But anyways, we go to the pagent and we're in the visitors center picking up our tickets and this lady dressed up to be in the pagent pulls Chuck aside and is like "Do you want to take a picture with some of the cast!?" and after some struggle convinces him. This is very smart on the mesa mission side! Then Chuck and his girlfriend get pulled into a long line where the girl starts talking to them about everything. The pagent. The missionaries. The everything. It was awesome. She said "I play 'follower of Christ', I do that every day, but now I get to dress up for it." After that, Elder Parrott and I looked at each other and complimented her on that line. She was totally helping us out. She was agressive as a temple sister! I hope it helped Chuck's girlfriend, because thats who we were trying to focus on. Then the pagent was amazing! It went through the whole life of Jesus Christ, and almost everything from the Bible. I dont even know how to describe how awesome it was. You just have to see it. Then at the end, Jesus gets lifted up into the sky on this pedistool, but it looks like he's floating! Theres nothing above it, its on the top of the stage and he just starts to float. Then it goes all dark and music starts to play. It was awesome in every single way. And Chuck and Diane really liked it too.

But then I left this morning and now I'm in Queen Creek! Exciting news in the mission, they just formed a new zone! Its like the split Queen Creek and another zone. And Elder Gunter is the Zone Leader there!

Anyways, gotta go!

Love Elder Feller

The Gilbert Zone!

The Easter Pagent

The first thing Elder Parrott told me when we moved into the Anderson's guest house was "She likes Christmas and Unicorns... and rifles"

All packed.

Daniel vs Muddy Buddies

From: Eric Feller <eric.feller@myldsmail.net>
Sent: Wed, Apr 13, 2011 18:04:57 GMT+00:00

This week was pretty average. A hard week for missionary work here in Gilbert. I dont know whats going on! Things just seem to be falling apart... no, not really. Just losing momentum. We need to pic it back up.

Chuck came back from North Dakota! But the problem is, he brought his girl friend! She doesnt want to get married and so that makes baptism hard. Apparently he had dropped her before... But you know what happens when you get snowed in North Dakota for a few extra days... But we're looking at it in a positive way. A two for one! It'll just take a little longer to happen thats all. The gospel is true, so its only a matter of time. The same principle applies to microwaving stuff. When you put two hot pockets in, it takes longer!

Also, we had "the baptism" talk with Jake. He's a little resistant to do it so fast. He feels like he needs to work some stuff out first. The problem is, getting him to understand that baptism will help him with all that. So we're still working on that. It doesnt help that his fellowship is in China for the next couple days.

So we made a ton of muddy buddies to thank the sisters for making us a pie... not just any pie, the best pie ever. Pictures bellow. It was pretty intense. We multiplied the normal recipie ... wait for it... TIMES FOUR!

Last sunday we taught our usual "Sunday night at 7 at the Stake President's house" lesson. Our stake president here is really awesome, and really trying to get missionary work going in his stake. So he has this young couple, Troy and Alexis, come over, and we teach them. Her parents are converts from this year. And they are really interested in getting married forever. Yes, we're the only church that can do that. They are awesome. But they're in a tricky situation for baptism because they live togeather, the wedding is not untill late may, and they arent in a situation for one of them to move right now... I guess. But I was asking some inspired questions last sunday and I asked "how did you feel at your parents baptism?" and Alexis said it felt powerful and Troy agreed and I said, "Do you want that same thing? Do you want to be baptized?" The both said yes! He light up like a flame thrower and was all for doing it right then! But she wants to be more sure... lame! But we'll get them soon enough. They are so cool. We got a text during church last sunday from the other missionaries saying Troy and Alexis went to one of their ward and were participating in church, and they knew all the answers from what we taught them! It was so cool! And when Alexis prayed at the end of our lesson, she thanked God for the opporitunity to learn from us, and to make her mom proud by knowing all the answers in Church. Does it get any better?

We also designed a t-shirt and are waiting for it to be printed! Its pretty awesome. Some zones in the mission will do zone t shirts. so we decided to do an area t shirt. It has my and my comps face on it, and some stuff on the back. I'll save the surprise for when I have pictures.

Last night we taught the first lesson to a kid of a part member family. But the non-member dad sat in! So it was hard to teach a 7 year old while trying to focus on the dad. But it turned out really good. We committed them to read and pray about the book of mormon as a family!

Pretty fun stuff. Plus: EASTER PAGENT STARTS THIS WEEK! We have one appointment to go next tuesday, and we're hoping for a few more! Coolest thing is: We can reserve seats for us and our investigators in the front rows! Or at least a little part of it. Its going to be so sweet!

Thats all foir this week!

Love

-Elder Daniel Feller

A familiar sight.

"Bland Homes" !?

I'm so serious

All the stuff for muddy buddies. (we didnt use ALL that)

Action shot!

The ammount of cereal

Final product.

Daniel vs Conference Weekend!

Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 11:13:36 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

So this past weekend was conference. It was weird going to 10 hours of Church over two days instead of 8 hours all at once! But conference was amazing! Going around every day and telling people how great it is that we have a living prophet on the earth really puts conference in perspective. When it began, and President Monson was talking I got an overwhelming feeling. It was awesome. Remember how President Uchtdorf was talking about how the church is reaching out though technology? Its true. Our whole mission has texting now, and all our new pass along cards guide people to Mormon.org, which is an AMAZING website! Everything on LDS.org gets really connected too! I would encourage everyone to use that to the max! I really learned a lot, and it answered a lot of my questions.

Which is funny because this week we also had interviews! So I didnt have that many questions for President...

Interviews were awesome too! The Zone Leaders trained on getting real fellowships for our investigators, not just having a "member present" which is what the stat is called for a lessons taught with a member there. Then the AP's trained on how important prayer was, and talked a lot about that, which was really good, until it was my turn to be interviews and I missed the last 10 mins of the training AND Elder Rands' departing testimony! Elder Rands has been AP since my second transfer, so way back when I was in Saint Johns. He's an awesome guy, and a stud missionary. And I missed his departing testimony! But my interview was really good. I walked in the little room in the church and President had this board with all this stuff on it, and was erasing all the numbers. He didn't even turn around when I walked in and he said, "hello Elder Feller, take a seat" it was funny. Like in a movie. But then he asked me all my numbers from last week and I was like "dang, I wish you did this a week ago when I wasn't kinda sick... and burned out from getting 200 oyms last week" Plus it didn't look to good because our teaching was down because we only could teach one guy once last week, and our other progressing investigator is stuck in North Dakota because is snowed up there! haha, funny story, we were talking to his neighbor and he called Chuck (the guy from ND) and Chuck said he was snowed in, and his neighbor was like, "that's funny, because its 98 degrees here and my kids are swimming!" (It got pretty hot last weekend) But anyways, president didnt give me too hard a time about the numbers, he said we were doing about as good as most, and I explained to him everything going on.There was a point to the numbers! He's not just all about "stats" but its hard to explain it all so I wont. Then I asked him some other questions about some stuff. The funny thing is, president isn't always supper talkative in interviews, but always asks what he can do for you. If you say nothing, then your interview is short and you dont learn allot. So I always come with specific questions about whats going on in my area and its really helpful.

So, P-Day is switching to Mondays in a couple weeks, on direction from the Missionary Department... LAME!

Oh, we got a referral from Elder Gunter the other day! He called and said he talked to this lady and her daughter who want to get baptised, and we he gave us the name he said, "April... Elizabeth... Fools." and I was too excited so I said "fools? Like 'oh thou fools'?" and he laughed and said yeah. Then I said "So her name is April Fools?" and then I realized what just happened. :(

Well thats pretty much it. We had a pretty slow week otherwise.

Wait. I forgot the most important thing. Ok, maybe second most important after hearing the prophet. Remember (FLASHBACK!) when I was in Saint Johns and I told you a Sister in Springerville made us the best apple pie I've ever tasted? I might not have told you but that happened. Well, she's in Gilbert now. I was telling my companion about the apple pie in the mountains (everynight, so good) and I said, but this sister makes the best apple pie I've ever had. So the next wednesday in Wal Mart he went up to her and said, "Elder Feller has been spreading rumors about you." and my companion is kinda a jokster so I was like "oh no!" and then he said "He said you make the best apple pie in the world." She said, "yeah, its true." And agreed to make us some. So she gave it to us at conference and we ate it. And it was the best... ever. So we were trying to think of a way to pay her back, and so we're going to make 4 batches of "Muddy Buddies" and give it all to her. Quantity for Quality, right?

Well that's really all of it.

Love,

-Elder Feller