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!