Daniel vs Sleep

Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 10:47:47 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

I have two weeks to catch up on! 

Last monday we put the Bocella family on date for May 26th. We have another lesson with them tonight, and we might move the date to June 9th. Depending on them. They are doing awesome, but we feel that they might need just a little bit more time. Its really cool to see all the things in their life that are moving thing forward in their spiritual progression. I guess this random person came to priesthood last week and shared a testimony that really helped Al. We mostly worried about him and about the younger daughter Bailey. They are coming a long, but aren't quite there.  

Last week the pedal on my bike stripped out! So I had someone fix it but in the mean time I rode a tiny 12 year old girl bike around all day. Picture below! But my bike is all better... for now... 

We also had a lesson with Carly last week. It went really well, she is doing great. But we talked a lot about her mom and how that is holding her back. Her mom is concerned about her, which is understandable. So were trying to help her be more open with her mom and try to help her see what she sees. We're working on it!

Danielle is doing well. We've still been teaching her every week. She loves the ward, and all the friends she now has. They've really helped her out. She keeps going back to coffee and then feeling really bad! So we're ironing that out as well. But she is really solid. She is really trying to learn. 

This week was a lot more boring. We got to teach Alex again. His mom is still crazy. She called us and asked if we really thought he was ready for baptism. We of course said yes, and explained it to her. She was planning on meeting with the bishop of their ward, and she wanted to be ready for the meeting. But at the end of the conversation she asked how she sets up the baptism, and so hopefully that will come about soon!

We finnaly taught Aubrey as well. He is having a hard time. Bad things keep happening in his life, and he knows its a test. So we asked him how he was going to pass that test, and then talked alot about prayer. Turns out, Aubrey never really askes for things when he prays. He used the excuse "I just do things myself" and so we talked about how its a commandment to ask for things, and theres some things he cant do without God. So we're going to follow up this week. 

They put Moroni on top of the Gilbert temple! There were crazy Mormons everywhere! It was really crowded all around the temple so we hid in this gated community and watched them put it on. It was cool. 

We got almost no sleep this week. I feel asleep early last night and slept well, but I needed it. 

Saturday we did a service project out on the Indian reservation. It was pretty cool. Elder Schick is doing a good job out there. The native attendance to the branch has really gone up. We cleaned another cemetery. Picture of the church building below! They also gave us a new car on Saturday! I miss our old one, a 2011 Chevy Malibu, but our new one is turning out to be way better. Its a 2011 Ford Fusion. 

Sunday we had to wake up early again to go to a Ward Mission Leader training. Staying awake in church was difficult...  Then that night we had two dinners because the other elders told people from the singles wards that we're not getting fed... Which is definitely a lie. But a funny one. It was cool, we went to dinner with the Elder Cox and Elder Wilhelm, but they told them they already ate a first dinner, so they kind of threw us under the bus! But it was ok, we paced ourselves and didn't end up too full. We ate with this family from England, and she knew us because we got a ride with them to the temple, and her daughter is in our singles ward. But it was a really funny dinner. Then at night we had to go to another meeting with the same guy as in the morning. Bro Hazelgren is awesome though. He's doing a fantastic job, and the missionary work in the stake is really turning around. 

love,

Elder Feller

 

Daniel vs Dust Storm

Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 10:24:55 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

Special Edition Blog this week, because I chatted with my family yesterday:

DUUUUSSSSSTTTT SSSSTTTTOOORRRMMMM. The first one of the year. Watch the progress

Videos and pictures are in order.

Daniel vs Meetings

Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 11:01:07 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

This week was crazy... But not a good missionary crazy. Like, meetings and stuff crazy.

Monday we taught the Boccela family. They are doing great. We finished talking about the Plan of Salvation, but mostly talked about Prayer. At the end we were just finishing up and I was asking if they had any questions, and I specifically asked the daughter, Avery, and she started crying and talked about her friend who died. We talked about it, and she felt a lot better. It was really cool, and then we talked about praying for comfort, and asked her to say the closing prayer. She said she figured that was coming, and we knelt down, and then the funniest thing ever happened. The dad, Al, got a charlie horse while kneeling and freaked out and fell on the ground saying "Ow! ow! ow! ow! ow! ow!" and we all started laughing. Bro Smelser went to go help him stretch it out and he got one in the other leg too. It was funny. The spirit that was there was gone, and then Avery said the closing prayer. It was still good. But really funny...

Tuesday we taught Alex again. He's doing well, but his mom is still crazy. She's putting a stop to everything, and saying he needs to read the whole book of mormon and stuff... I dont know whats going on there, but the sisters tell us he has been at church, so thats a good sign... That night we had a crazy time trying to figure out what to do and where to go. It was fun though, we stopped by the singles ward FHE activity and saw Danielle. She's doing great. We also found a ride to transfer meeting.

Wednesday we went to transfers meeting, and took Elder Howard home with us. He was down from Show Low and came to our area for the day. It was fun. We got our long board we bought from Cole Warner, the fellowship for Carly. Its custom made! Picture below. But the rest of the day wasn't to productive. It was mostly people being happy to see Elder Howard time. It was a good day though.

I'm emailing from a High School Library its kind of weird.

Thursday was Zone Leader Council. It was mostly uneventful. The biggest thing we did was talk about the activity planned for Friday were we read from the Book of Mormon from 8:00AM to 8:30 PM. The purpose being to help us build faith and unity. It was no secret that I didnt agree with doing the activity at first, but after I heard Presdient and Elder Potts talk about it I felt better about it, and we had a good time on friday. But I seriously sit in that meeting sometimes and wonder how smart people actually are. Some of them always try so hard to "aspire" as we call it. They were asking about wearing suits the whole day while we did it and most people were like "heck no!" but one ZL was like "I like it! Then we can cary more pens in our pockets!" and I just said straight out loud "I have pockets on my pants..." and Elder Case laughed really hard at me. But, in the end, President wanted us to wear suits. So we went in on Friday and wore suits for like 20 mins, and then gave everyone permission to take off their coats. The meeting went well though. We also prepared for the training were going to do at the end of the month. That was pretty cool. And its always good to see my friends from all over.

Friday was the Zone read-a-thon. We got together at a church building and set up tables in the releif society room and read the Book of Mormon aaallllll day. It was actually really good for us. And surprisingly, everyone kept really good focus untill about 7:30. We started reading out loud as a group and did that for a long time and then switched to individual. It was cool to see themes that were common across the whole book, that you wouldnt normally catch in just a few chapters. At 8:00 I was on Mosiah 27, and I brought everyone back together and we read Moroni 10 as a group and then talked about what we learned untill 8:30.

Saturday was catch up day. We started off doing service on the Indian Reservation south of Chandler. One of the Elders in our Zone has been asked to start working out there. We went in and cleaned up the semetary that was across from the LDS chapel. It was cool. The Reservation is what I expected Arizona to look like when I came out here... dusty and shacks everywhere... It was like the Wild West! But service was good. They put a lot of stuff on the graves because they believe it belongs to the person. And of course, we were cleaning up this pile of garbage, and Elder Parrott was like "I think thats actually a grave..." and we told him it wasn't and cleaned it all up and then we looked at it again and realized it probably was... and we were stepping all over it and throwing away his stuff. We left it alone after that. It was really funny, because at the end the native guy incharge asked us to say a prayer for the people in the graves, and we took that as protection for us for taking his stuff... haha. Saturday afternoon we had a huge long meeting with our district leaders about all the problems in our zone...

And sunday was.... typical sunday. I had a huge headache from fasting, and we were still trying to catch up... Nothing to exciting.

We got mission T-Shirts! and also, someone in our district made district T-Shirts! Pictures below.

Love,
Elder Feller

My New Longboard

Me Riding my new Longboard in our front yard this morning... I'm still really bad at it... 

The Mission T-Shirt (and new logo)

District Shirt front and back. The back is "the Watering hole" with all of our "Spiritual Animals" drinking from it. I'm the big black bear. 

Elder Krueger got transfered! 

Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:50:10 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

Danielle's baptism was awesome! We taught her twice this week leading up to it. We had a really good lesson about the Tree of Life, and then talked about the Holy Ghost after her interview. She is doing amazing. She's a really strong person and she's sticking to it. And the ward has made such good friends with her, she already hangs out with all of them. So were happy. She is into decorating so her baptism had a lot of cute decorations to it. But her parents and some family came, and so it was really good for her and for them. Bro. McConkie baptized and confirmed her and gave a very powerful blessing.

Monday we taught the Boccela (Bo-CHELL-AH) family. It was a really good lesson. We talked about the plan of Salvation, but mostly about prayer. We had Al say the closing prayer and he did a really good job, despite all his fears. They were at church this week, and are doing awesome. We meet with them again tonight.

Nothing else too noteworthy happened this week. President Riggs, the San Tan stake president, was released. One of our bishops is now a councilor. Oh, we did have a sweet 6AM meeting on Sunday. It made us really tired for the rest of the day... and I'm still tired because of it (and I haven't been sleeping well) but it was great. The stake has only had one baptism so far this year, and so they're trying to fix that and focus on missionary work. They had some really good trainings, and then made all the priesthood leaders role play, and then President Howes threw down on them for like 20 minutes. It was really amazing. They talked about "real growth in the church" which really means families getting baptized, active, and serving missions. President let them know something I don't think they knew, that Arizona is a choice land, and the church here is strong, and we still need more of this real growth to make more missionaries in the future. We are laying the foundations for a great work.

Love,
Daniel

Free Cactus!

My Area.

Us and Danielle

Elder Jackson, Elder Feller, Danielle, Sis. McConkie, Bro. McConkie.  

Kinda blurry, but its Elder Bruce R. McConkie's folder and business card! 

Daniel vs Heartburn

Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:48:30 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

Last Monday we taught a whole family of 5. Im not sure how to spell their last name yet, so I'll get that next time. They are friends with the Smelser family who live in the little mormon gated neighborhood we live in. (I haven't sent pictures of that yet! Next week!) They know them from their daughters playing softball. Al and Heather and their kids moved here from Philadelphia a little bit ago. They are awesome! The Smelsers have done a good job sharing the Gospel with them. They invited them to church on Easter, and watched some of conference with them, so its going great. They invited us over for dinner on Monday, and then we taught the first lesson after. Al was into it, he used to be Catholic, but wasn't happy with that. Heather has never had religion or anything, and she was paying really close attention, and giving us this stare, and at first I thought she was mad at us, but she was just paying really close attention. It was pretty funny... But by the end there were tears and everything. So its going great. We have another lesson with them tonight. And he said he'd bring us legit Italian meatballs this time. They are also being fellowshipped by the ward they actually live in... which we don't cover.

 

Tuesday we taught Alex. I'm concerned about him right now. His mom is throwing all sorts of wrenches into it. She is giving him all sorts of concerns that wouldn't have existed otherwise. And its going to be difficult for him to stay on the path, and keep doing what he needs to with opposition coming from within his home. And his mom said he has to read the whole Book of Mormon before he gets baptized. Which is also crazy... He's 15... come on.

 

Wednesday night we taught Danielle the rest of the commandments. She is doing awesome. She is handling all the opposition in her life very well. We found out Sunday that her parents are being less supportive, and her best friend told her not to do it. But she doesn't care. She knows whats right, and she's going for it.

 

We have also found out that the girls we were teaching a while ago, Haley and Veronica, are making bad choices, and so their friend doesn't want to talk to them anymore, and so we haven't been able to teach them for a while... I understand where she's coming from though. and so does Bro. Penrod. He told us as a parent he's glad she's making good choices, but from a missionary aspect, he wishes she would stay friends with them and pull them in. So its a weird situation.

 

Thursday we taught Carly again. Carly is doing amazing. She left her journal/notebook at the Warner's house for them to read, and they had us look at it also. She takes awesome notes on whats going on in the Book of Mormon, she wrote down how to pray, and a question about receiving answers, that a bunch of her Mormon friends, including most of the Warner family answered. And then the last thing she wrote was a prayer, that was really touching. We assumed she was ready for a baptism date, and we went into the lesson prepared to do that, but as we talked to her she was telling us she wanted a more sure answer. She wants to "know" as she said. We talked about how that was important. She is the most sincere 15 year old ever... And that will be good for her parents as well. They are mostly supportive, but understandably a little apprehensive. They want her to attend a few other Christian church services just to make sure. But she also needs to come to ours! She misses it a lot because she plays competitive soccer.

 

Friday I went on exchanges with Elder Cox in my area. He is one of our district leaders. He is awesome. We had a ton of fun. Not a whole lot happened all day. I had to drive to wal-mart and get a bike seat on our "no drive day" because my old one was broken. But we had a good day. Elder Cox really cares about people, and is real and genuine. And I really appreciate that. Too many people get so caught up in stupid stuff, acting like they care, but they really don't do anything. I have always tried not to do that. I'm very realistic. And so it was a good day. Elder Cox is also hilarious. 

 

Saturday we went to the ward "foot-rodeo". Just a rodeo themed activity. It was funny. They, of course, had the Elders be judges of the Chili contest. So Elder Jackson and I tasted all 36 different Chilis. Oh man. It was fun, but I didn't feel good after. I found myself giving the highest scores to things that tasted the least like Chili... The white chicken one and the stake & salsa verde one were my favorites. We also watched over a hundred little kids chase chickens around the rodeo arena. A ton of them biffed it really hard diving after the chickens. It was worth it. We also got to talk to Carlos, the guy we taught on Easter. He is doing awesome, and meeting with the missionaries in Mesa.  

 

Sunday was a typical church day. Danielle was at the singles ward, which is always an adventure. Theres a ton of funny people there. We've been trying to make friends and get to know the ward better to try and get more referrals out of them. All the guys in the ward are RMs, so they're not dumb, and the more I get to know them, the better they'll do. Sunday night we met with a new High Councilor about the missionary work in his stake. [... I was about to write all this stuff about the stuff he said that I found annoying. but I decided not too. I've realized recently that I've become a lot more sassy on my mission. Mostly I think because I don't put up with as much, and I think I'm a lot more comfortable expressing myself... But I'm still working on being nice to people. Never has been a strong point.] but all in all he's a good guy, and will do awesome in the calling. The stake needs it to. So I'm excited for that to come.  

 

Pictures next week,

Love,

Elder Feller

Daniel vs Stake Meetings

Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:12:43 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net
 

It was kind of a weird week. We're trying to pull all the stakes here together and build them up. But we also had a lot of lessons cancel... It was a long week. 

On Monday I said goodbye to Jeff and Jenny. I'm turning them over to the missionaries in their actual ward. The lesson went pretty well, except Jenny, who is less active, doesn't really have a desire to make the effort to come back to church. Jeff is willing to do whatever right now, so its almost sad to see. Jeff is going to take a while, and Jenny is going to need to be leading the family in the spiritual aspect before he will progress. But I have faith in them. They are awesome people. 

On Tuesday we taught Alex, and put him on date for may 5th. It doesn't count for us, but for the sisters. But hopefully his mom will let him... She was walking in and out and around the whole lesson. Alex invited her to join and said we were having a blast and she said, "yeah it sounds like a Word of Wisdom party in here." I think part of the reason she's less active because she doesn't really want to live the commandments. So it was funny, but awkward. Alex is doing great. He understands the why behind the commandments, and so he's willing to live them. 

Thursday I was on exchanges with Elder Schick. It was awesome. Elder Schick is the man. He covers the Reservation now, but unfortunately i didn't get to go there... But we did meet with a member of the stake presidency and he talked to us about this leadership training the mission president is going to be at in a few weeks. He invited us and so we're preparing for that. These stakes are really trying to shape up and do better, especially since the church asked them to make missionary goals and they're all doing really bad. So the training will be a great opportunity to give them direction.  

Friday we taught Danielle! She is doing great. She sailed through all the toughest commandments. She told us before that she had some trials pop up this week and handled them like a pro. Her old ex-boyfriend, who apparently is a tool, tried to get in contact with her and she just ignored it. Then, her friends wanted her to go out drinking "one last time" and she put her foot down and said no. She also talked with her family about it, and they are ok and so she is super excited! She went to church yesterday and everyone was super friendly and welcomed her. They announced that she was getting baptized, and so people were all over her. But she really loves church, and she tells us all the time about how happy the gospel makes her. 

Saturday one of the stakes in the zone called us and asked us to prepare a ton of reports and a training for a meeting they were having the next morning at 6 am insead of the normal stake meeting. So we spent a ton of time getting it all together and then meeting with the missionaries to figure out what to do. We woke up really early and went to the meeting and they hardly let us talk. But its ok, the stake is doing better. They are starting to make missionary work a priority and actually try. So hopefully they will do better. We're trying to direct them the best we can. But the rest of our Sunday was tough! I was exhausted and had a huge headache all through church, dinner, a lesson with a member family, and then a meeting with President Riggs. at 8 we went to the Bowen's house and she sowed our pants, and I drank a soda to get at my headache, then we went home, did some weekly paperwork, then crashed by like 10 and finished and faxed in the paper work this morning. So I feel a lot better. 

Today we're going to Queen Creek to play another zone is kickball. It should be fun. 

Love,

Daniel

Daniel vs Easter

Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2012 10:55:58 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

We had a pretty busy week here. Not the busy I would like, but it was still an over all good week.

Tuesday we had a bunch of appointments all in a row, but the last one cancelled. We taught Carly about the Plan of Salvation. It went really well. She has been reading a ton from the Book of Mormon. She had a few pages of notes just from the introduction and the first few chapters. She's really interested, and we can only hope her parents wont be a problem. Then we taught Alex and asked him to pray about a day to be baptized. We've had to be really careful because it seems like his mom is looking for any excuse to try and stop him, even though she's a member herself. Just really less active... So we'll follow up on that tomorrow. Oh also, on Tuesday I returned an iPhone that I had found on the road a few weeks ago. She was really grateful and gave us some candy. Unfortunately though, I don't have an iPhone anymore.... haha. Pictures below.

Wednesday we had interviews all day. President always does the Zone Leaders last and talks to us about all the people in the zone. It was pretty cool. My personal interview was really short. But then he talked to both of us about most of the people in the zone. It was really cool to hear how well President knows everyone, even though its hard to feel like he really knows you when you dont know him that well, especially when you're young in the mission. Apparently he told Elder Krueger that he was going to get more responsibility soon. Which is good for him. I cant believe I trained him 8 months ago! But no other really big news. Oh, President has asked Elder Schick to start working on the Indian Reservation that is just south of his area. So that's pretty cool. He's really excited about it.

Thursday and Friday we spent all day in Leadership trainings. It was good, but long. Thursday we were in one of my old areas, which was kinda cool. I don't really miss the Mesa Zone... But it was a really good meeting. They paired us off with people we've never been around and we taught together. It was really fun. We talked a lot about making commitments and following up. Friday was good too. In the morning we spent a lot of time in a zone leader group, talking about specific questions. Sometimes I really hate all zone leader meetings because there are too many chiefs and not enough indians. A lot of the zone leaders think they're really hot stuff... Its annoying. And I really believe it causes so many problems in zones. You cant just be the missionary police and pretend like you were never where the missionaries are, you have to be their friends and make sure they know that you're on of them. I tried to bring that up, but we didnt have time. They were too busy  arguing about something stupid. In the afternoon we had a big question and answer, and the questions were actually good this time. I won a golden chocolate egg with one of my answers. Basically along the same line as what I said earlier. People were getting into this question and the answer there were arguing about was way off. They were talking about how we need to be "Preach My Gospel" missionaries and help people become converted to the book Preach My Gospel. I brought up how I don't want to be converted to the book, I want to be converted to the gospel because that's what the book Preach My Gospel, and Elder Bednar's talk "Becoming a Preach My Gospel Missionary" is about. So I got a golden Easter egg. With these stories, I'm not trying to say that I'm more intelligent than a lot of other people, but I mean... come on.

Friday night we taught Danielle. She really wanted to be baptized. I'm not used to that. She really threw herself out there... We didn't really know how to react so it was kind of awkward for a second. But we put her on date for the 28th of April. The lesson went really well, but I felt like I wasn't entirely spiritually prepared for it.

Sunday was easter! We had church all day. And our dinner almost cancelled on us because their nephew almost died in a skateboarding accident... It was kind of awkward, I felt really bad. But it worked out great and we had a good time. We were going home after to do our weekly planning because we didn't get to do it on Friday or Saturday and we got a call from a family asking us to come over and teach their niece's boyfriend right away. I was kind of annoyed because I expected the guy to just be some thug who didn't really want to listen to us, but couldn't escape this family. I repented. Carlos was awesome. We had a really spiritual lesson with him, and he is really looking for answers and peace in life. We taught him outside by candlelight which was kind of cool. I didn't recognize the family, I think they go to a Spanish ward somewhere. But it was awesome. Too bad he lives in Mesa, and we probably wont meet with him again. But he will be taught. So its all good.

Love,
Daniel