Taco Time!

August 21, 2017

Judging by all the emails from my family, I think my mission is coming to a close.

This last week was packed full of different events as usual. Exchanges, lots of teaching, lots of meetings...and so on and so forth.

Tuesday we took Elder Arbon to the airport so he could fly home to good ol AZ! 

This week we got to drive downtown to Salt Lake, and drive 3 levels below temple Square to the Church Headquarters Vehicle Division. Pretty cool place to be, especially when you get to pick up your new 2017 Tacoma. Bye bye Frontier!

N. and N. were on track to be married Friday until... he got himself locked up in jail. And now we have no idea where they are. Too bad. We were able to find a ton of new investigators this week, so the work goes on!

Thursday evening we got invited by President Lansing to go to one of their Lansing Building Products warehouses for an annual 'Corn Roast' party. It was awesome to see their business and the culture they have created.

Friday morning we had to correct some missionaries... my favorite! Ok... maybe Correcting isn't my favorite, but the results are. After that we met President Lansing at a church building in South Jordan where 4 of our missionaries are working with the missionary department implementing mobile proselyting. Our mission is the first proselyting mission to try it out. It is pretty amazing... the work of Salvation is definitely being hastened. The Church is going to quite extensive measures to ensure we are able to keep up with the hastening!

We had a great experience teaching a referral from one of our bishops, who was able to come to church on Sunday!

All in all a good week. I'm on to my last full week, gotta make the best of it! For those of you who want to see me at the airport, my plane lands at about 11:30 am at sky harbor a week from Wednesday (aug 30). Come say hi! 

       Love 

  Elder Ray

Elder Ray and Elder Kaka with former Elder Bouchillon

Going Fast during the Eclipse

With a cool car

Taco Time! (With the Mission's New Toyota Frontier)

Checking out the tires...

P-day "Shenanigans"

Seeing Elder Arbon off at the SLC Airport

Moroni 10:27

August 15, 2017

Hello!

This week went scary fast... I can't remember much of what went on...

N. & N. got their marriage license for this weekend, we are pretty excited for that. 

We went to a couple district meetings and met with some new Zone leaders who needed training. We had exchanges with Spanish and south Jordan Zone leaders, a new missionary training meeting, and our regular meeting with President Lansing. This week we were able to pick up a couple new investigators, too.

Saturday and Sunday was stake conference, our visiting authority was elder Kapishka of the 70. We were scheduled for a different 70, but... some stuff happened that you may or may not have heard about... and we got assigned a different one. Haha. The church is still true! Sometimes things happen that, if we aren't careful, can turn us away from truth. I love Moroni 10:27 where Moroni says "I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust?" Just as many oppose the Lord and His works, He never ceases to place messengers in our path—in living person or in the scriptures—to help us stay on the straight and narrow path that leads to Eternal Life. That's where we wanna go!

Have a good week. 

       Love 

  Elder Ray

Seth with the Junium Family

Seth, ex-missionary Colton Kelley, and Elder Kaka

Sandy Zone Activity

Cathy!

August 7, 2017

This week was pretty all over the place. We've been teaching N. and N. who we picked up a couple weeks ago. They aren't married, but it's been so awesome to see how they have received answers that they need to be married so they can be baptized. They've come to church every week for the past three weeks. We took the bishop to a lesson, and they met with him after church yesterday to start making plans to get married. I've never had a wedding on my mission so this will be fun!

On Tuesday we went to some Zone Meetings, and on Thursday we had a District Leader Training meeting for all the district leaders in the mission. We really just focused the whole meeting on how they can improve their image as leaders and be more inspiring and powerful so their missionaries want to follow them. Later that day we got a call from president Lansing. Our mission has begun a trial mission for some sort of call center thing the mission department is testing. So we chose 4 missionaries to be involved, and president Lansing wants them to become companions (2 separate companionships, still). 2 of them are Zone leaders and 1 is a district leader. So, President Lansing told us to make them companions. Which means we had to emergency transfer each of them—as well as a few other companionships—around the mission to make it work. So, in the middle of the transfer we had to do about 10 emergency transfers, including calling 2 New Zone Leaders and 3 new District Leaders. Hahaha. So that was pretty fun and crazy. But it all worked out fine.

Thursday night while on exchanges, elder Bottari and I got to go lift Cathy into bed with elders Rodriguez and Henley. If you haven't seen the "Lift"  Mormon message, go watch it. 

On Saturday Jada got baptized! It was awesome. Her family is less active but has been coming back to activity as she has gone through the process. Her father is not a member, we hope to start teaching him soon. After the baptism we took the T. family to temple square.

Sunday we had 6 investigators at church, N. and N., A. and her son J., and then A. and S.-two of the T. kids.

Life's great!

Love

-Elder Ray

At Jada's baptism

Elders Ray and Kaka with Jada

Elders Rodriguez, Bottari, and Ray with Cathy

Elder Rodriguez's close haircut

Elders Kaka and Ray

Elder Kaka

Seth and Elder Kaka 

"Hoping to Baptize like Crazy this Last Month"

July 31, 2017

Hello everyone!

This week was busy with Zone Conferences.

Tuesday and Wednesday we had Zone Conferences which tie elder Kaka and I up from about 8am to 4pm, then afterwards we were able to work.

Thursday we had exchanges with the Sandy Zone Leaders, I went with Elder Rodriguez who I was companions with back in feb/mar when I trained him to be a Zone Leader. I love going on exchanges with past companions and seeing how much they grow!

Friday we had accountability meetings with Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders.

Saturday we met with President as usual. At about 8:30 pm not much had happened but we got a call from a member who runs a bed n breakfast out of her antique home, she had a young couple move in the day before who said they were lds but haven't been baptized yet. We dropped everything we were doing and went over to teach Nate and Nicole, a great young couple from Texas who are starving for the word of god. They are now on date to be baptized in August. They went to church on their own last week, and came again yesterday.

Sunday was lots of church... a few of our investigators came which always rocks. This week we picked up 5 new investigators and put a few more on date, it was a great week. elder Kaka and I are hoping to baptize like crazy this last month! 

       Love 

  Elder Ray