MERRY CHRISTMAS!​!

Well it's that time of year again! We've had a good week and we spent a lot of time in Gunnison this week...three trips in fact! First we did exchanges, I went with Elder Stewart for the day. He used to be an assistant so he's on the ball to say the least. He reminds me of Keith haha so that was pretty cool! We had a good time. Other than that, I did a couple baptismal interviews for them a couple days later, and on Saturday they had a couple baptisms! Awesome! They are definitely on fire. So is the 4th ward, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. We helped out in Sunday School and got a lot more people fired up to assist in the work of salvation. The bishop's wife even said "Let's give these missionaries so much to do in our ward that they will have to send in another set for the other 24 wards they cover!" Amen! A young mother came up to us afterward and told us about her less active neighbors, who we visited and set an appointment with later that day. Sweet! Hmm what else happened this week.......we're starting to teach a sheep herder from Peru! His name is Luis, he's pretty awesome. I'll be the first one to admit that my spanish is awful but at least I was able to ask him for a referral, and he doesn't really know anyone here in San Pete but he said he'll call his family and friends in California and Alaska and all over the place! Sweet! When it comes to the spanish work and my apprehension thereof, I have come to realize that if I remove all my incentives to be stand-off ish, the only thing that is left is an unavoidable opportunity to communicate and care. Rafael is coming along, but he isn't allowed to be baptized here and he leaves next month. We'll just enjoy it while it lasts! I guess Ilaisia and Elaisa got stuck up in Salt Lake due to the bad weather so we haven't seen them since last week! Helene Willardsen, a 74 year old less active lady that has become another grandma to me finally made it to church this week!!!!! after like 5 months of inviting and inviting and exhorting and pleading! Hallelujah! Thank goodness for good fellowshippers, the Wrights! I always knew "wrights" were good people haha and I can honestly say that I've never met a wrong wright. But other than that, things are going pretty well up here!

I'll be calling on Skype at 11am utah time, coming in live from (hopefully) Patricia's house! Either way, see you at 11! Except I guess Keith and Shauna. Darn I'll have to see them in a few more months. Merry Christmas you two! Thank you for your examples of christlike love, diligence, patience, and devotion to one another. You guys are the best! You guys are the best! No really! I mention that twice because it's only as cliche as you make it to be. Thanks to everyone and I love you all!

Love,

Elder Payne!

 

New Record for Me...3 Stakes, 25 Wards!

My goodness, another week has flown by. In fact, another year has almost flown by as well! Honestly the fastest year of my life! It just goes to show that when you drown yourself in a specific purpose and work through the highs and lows and all the hustle and bustle connected with that purpose, time goes out the window! We've had another good week. It's been kinda hectic rapping my head around two more stakes that we cover and trying to keep tabs on all the information, but things are settling in for this transfer quite nicely. Plus it's now Christmas break for all the students and about 97% of them left town haha including our 4 YSA investigators. We managed to locate and contact and teach three of the four before finals ended, each are of course in different circumstances. None of them are on date for baptism except for the one guy named Sergio that we didn't get to contact this week. Haha darn!

Let me tell you about Momoe though. You see, Snow College has some sort of international student acceptance program going on because there's honestly hundreds of Asians walking around campus. Momoe is one of them! She is from Japan and her name is pronounced "Muh-moy." She's so short! But she's so awesome! We've taught her twice now and today she left for New York for a couple weeks until school starts back up. Teaching her is honestly a throw back to teaching Yoshi Suzuki back in my first area. Japanese people are the best! Momoe doesn't know a whole lot of English, but she knows border line enough. Unfortunately her translator/fellowshipper (who ironically is named Yoshi as well, different one though) is gone to Japan now and he's not coming back haha. So we need to find a Japanese/English speaking person somewhere here in Ephraim! Other than that, we stick to the basics. The lessons we've taught her are equivalent to teaching the primary kids and it's kinda awkward sometimes because her accent is soo thick that we can't really understand something as simple as "Jesus help me." It's a work in progress!

While we're on an international basis, we also picked up a new investigator named Rafael from Brazil! He's a foreign exchange student living with the Alder family here in Ephraim. (I've asked them if they're related to the Thatcher Alder's but if so it's probably a little distant.) Anyway, he's a cool kid! He's a sophomore in high school I believe, and believe it or not he doesn't know how to play soccer!! Wha!! He's from Brazil of all places! haha but he's very book smart and his English is a little better than Momoe's, but not much. We just shared a simple Christmas message from Mosiah 3 and ate some ice cream on a toasty 2 degrees night. He comes to church every week with his foster family and wants to learn more! Unfortunately he's going back to Brazil in about a month, so we'll see what kind of a seed we can plant with him. 

We're finally starting to teach Ilaisia again! I met him on like my second or third day here in Ephraim, and now that football and finals are over, he has time to sit down and take some lessons. Big man! He could probably eat me if he wanted a snack. But his heart is as big as the rest of him. haha he cancelled and rescheduled with us like 3 times this week, but we still met a couple times and taught him about Jesus Christ and prophets. He's super open! His wife hasn't participated yet because she has two kids. The other night I had a simple prompting to drive by their house, and when we drove by we saw Ilaisia and some of his giant friends trying to break into his house haha. So we got out and asked what was going on. Turns out he locked his keys and his phone inside haha. So Elder Ramirez used his paisa skills and opened the window just enough to use the wooden blinds to unlatch the window completely. He said the whole time he was wrestling with it, he was praying to open the window haha. It worked! Ilaisia thanked us like 15 times. 

Well anyway, we should have plenty to do now. We cover like 25 wards I think haha and we have 10 non member investigators now. We also are working with a few other less-active families. Other than that, we've been spending a lot more time at our bishop's homes. One bishop in particular, Bishop Stevens in the 4th ward, has really impressed us. 4th ward has been notorious for being an active ward with non members you can count on one hand and a handful of less-active families. Well, Bishop Stevens has been catching the vision with our visits and encounters with him. We're going to a Christmas basket/caroling mutual activity this week and we're going to help his wife in a Sunday school lesson this Sunday. Bishop invited us over to Priest's quorum yesterday and he committed his 4 priests to call a NM/LA friend and set up an appointment for them to practice teaching in preparation for their missions coming up. We're expecting some phone calls in the next couple weeks for that. Bishop Stevens is going to have us over for dinner on Christmas day! We're excited for that and especially for the work he's starting up in his ward. He's putting a lot of effort into his missionary work! It's cool because I didn't even really know who he was for the first like 3 months that I was here in Ephraim. He's on fire! and the rest of the family stake is getting there too....we have a combined YM/YW lesson coming up and some talks we need to give. We're starting to get pretty involved!

Well according to the communicator, I guess we can Skype for Christmas! Gosh we weren't expecting that! Hmm...we're probably going to shoot for late morning or early afternoon sometime on Christmas day because we have that dinner at 2pm. We just need to schedule around some members' schedules and I'll have to let you know for sure what time next week. I forgot how all the skype thing works haha but I'm sure the members here will guide me and walk beside me. Let me know what your plans are! 

Love,

Elder Payne!

 

This week, I froze!

Well hello! Good to hear from everyone, and thanks again to Keith for reminding me about the wonderful weather we have up here haha. Up here we had a couple nice days, then it got nasty and the temperature dropped like 50 degrees. It snowed all afternoon on Tuesday and into the night, then the next couple days the high never got above single digits with a low of around -20, so the snow hasn't had a single chance to melt yet. Then on Saturday it snowed like crazy alllllll day haha. And for some reason Heavenly Father thinks it's funny to put a thatcher kid behind the wheel in the thick of all this haha. I got our malibu stuck on the side of the road like 10 times this week! haha we just laugh every time because I'm such an awful snow driver. But hey, I'm learning quickly! Thank goodness the traffic here is equal to thatcher. suuuper slick roads, we basically slide to all of our appointments now. We had to drive to Richfield which is one hour away on icy roads, so we took it slow and made it safe haha. Gotta watch out for that black ice! No wrecks though mom! Heavenly Father is still very merciful haha. We tried parking the car a few times and walking in the negatives, and my scarf covering my face kept freezing solid haha. What's it like in Thatcher these days? I heard that St. George got pounded with snow and they had to shut like everything down, even church yesterday was cancelled haha. Crazy weather here in southern Utah! Don't come here

Well, despite the weather, it's been a pretty good week for us! I'll cut to the chase as far as transfers goes...we're both staying in Ephraim! Gosh that means I'll have been here at least as long as I was in Buena Vista! By the end of this month I will have spent 11 months in two areas. President Center likes leaving people in areas longer than President Leonard did. Anyway, we're both stoked! We're especially excited because we're getting the addition of Ephraim YSA as well, exclusive for this transfer only! So the sisters are both leaving, s Randolph is going home and s Keenan just got her visa to go to Brazil. We'll definitely miss them from our district, and with them leaving and winter break coming up this week, they decided to just hand everything to us for now! haha sure we'll take it! School gets back in session Jan 6, and this transfer ends Jan 20 so we won't have a whole lot of time to do a whole lot, but we'll see what we can do! So yeah, we now cover all of Ephraim...everyone, and we cover the entire county minus Gunnision in Spanish. Should be lots to do!

And with the new transfer comes new opportunities to make some changes and improvements. We had a zone conference this week with Elder Arnold of the Seventy. No iPads were announced, nor facebook privileges. But the Spirit resonated far beyond your normal church meeting. For some reason, there's so much authority with general authorities! Elder Arnold is the type of guy thats serious faced all the time, but he jokes around a lot. Whenever an elder would say a really great remark, he would immediately call them up to the front, dead serious. Once they made the long walk and stood next to him, he would turn to them and give them a big hug and say thank you. haha The meeting was basically a mixture of any normal zone conference and the mission conference with Elder Bednar. Long story short, there's lots of things I was reminded of in new light, and it's up to me to make some changes. One thing he said was (quoting one of the prophets) "if you go to a meeting and don't change anything because of it, why did you go?" Good question. We should all keep that in mind. 

Well I was asked to give the closing prayer. He did kinda the same thing to me too. I made the long walk up there and stood right next to him. Then he said how whenever the prophet would look him dead square in the eye, he felt like he was piercing into his soul, and that's exactly what he did to me haha. Pretty intense! He closed with a powerful testimony and then told me to say the prayer. I said a simple but convicting prayer and afterwards I expected a mere handshake from Elder Arnold, but instead he gave me a big hug and said thank you. From that example I've been able to better understand how it's possible to gain consistent charity for all men. It doesn't matter who the person is, if we but look for the good within them and look for their potential, we will have a greater capacity to love them as the Savior would, even if we never see the person ever again. 

Well with all that in mind, I was definitely lifted up and ready to go get the plates from Laban or something. We're excited for the new transfer, and we're in a perfect position to take a step back, take a deep breath, and get involved with the members in Ephraim and get to work. We've been doing some "bishop blitz" nights and we're getting a lot of refreshed direction on what exactly needs to be done. We've already met with one of the YSA stake president's and we've gone to a couple ward councils. We have invites to participate in lessons and ym/yw activities and ward parties and FHE's and you name it. The members are starting to see the light, and they're getting fired up. Although there may not be a whole lot of interested non members or less actives here, at least we're all starting to faithfully do our part, yoked together in unity with our Master, Jesus Christ. What an honor it is to be serving right here, right now! 

Well so we'll see what we can do from here. It's not very often you get to spend all the Halloween's, Thanksgiving's, Christmas's, and New Year's with the same companion on your mission one state away from your home, so that's pretty cool! haha and this week a local missionary had to come home briefly for gull bladder sugery. He is still set apart and is serving in the Fresno, CA mission. He says he knows Elder McMaster who just left that mission to Brazil. Cool! and in the Spanish branch here there is a brother Scholes. Awesome guy! He's waiting to go on a mission with his wife to Chile after fixing some medical things. Anyway, he said he was companions with a Harold Payne from Thatcher, and I believe he served in Uruguay. He's 65 years old. Hmm...

Well that's all for this week!

Love,

Elder Payne!

 

Another Successful Thanksgivi​ng!

Well guys it's good to hear from everyone, whether or not they sent an email! Looks like you guys had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was pretty good itself! We only ate two thanksgiving dinners this year! Last year we packed three haha. Anyway we ate at the Prigmore's and the Hancock's. Bro Prigmore is the high counselor for missionary work, so we work with him quite a bit, and Bro Hancock is the ward mission leader for the 7th ward. The Prigmore's had the whole set up...big dinner, lots of family, and we ate in the garage! haha which after they had decked it all out turned out really awesome! The Hancock's are empty nesters and have a son on a mission in Mexico who also comes home in May. They both served missions and in fact they met on their mission...they served in the same zone and hated each other! Interesting story. Anyway I'm scared now because I hope I don't marry any of the sisters in this mission! But yeah after the food and all that we had a "half-zone/San Pete" activity at the Ephraim YSA stake center. We played pool and ping pong and basketball and knockout and sprout ball...super fun! There wasn't a single missionary that didn't have a fun time. That's what I love about this zone is that all of us get along really well. Even the missionaries that are polar opposites and have nothing in common get along and have fun. It's such a blessing! We had a great thanksgiving.

Well I opened the envelop that night and read it haha. Man it looks like the thoughts I wrote down were written by a 1st grader! and mom's thoughts were like a top-selling inspirational novel! Anyway, I guess we'll have to stay tuned for 2018! Maybe the Savior will have come by then, who knows!

The work has been pretty slow this week, whether it be the fact that it was Thanksgiving or the fact that Kelly is all moved to Nevada or the fact our other investigators are cooling off...either way, it was pretty slow. However, the work should pick up a lot this week. We have some more potentials coming up through the cracks and President will be doing an interview this week for one of our investigators, Caroline, who is Jason's wife and Bobby's mom. Anyway she used to be fundamentalist and didn't really practice and has been "mormon" for years now, she just hasn't been baptized yet. Couple interviews should fix that!

Yesterday we got a call from a member named Bro Carter. He has a spanish family that he's been trying to reach out to. Last year he gave them some Christmas treats. This year he's going to give them a Book of Mormon with his testimony. The problem is that he doesn't speak spanish! So he called us up and sought for help and approval. We're going to go over this week and help him out as he delivers it. We never told him that we've tried and failed to connect with this family a couple times, but we don't want to spoil his efforts. I'm personally impressed at Bro Carter's desire and effort to do some legitimate missionary work. He's a very timid person and isn't exactly sure what to do, he's just doing it. What a good example! He's one of the first to have stepped up and give us a call to help with his friends since I've been in the area. Other than him and a couple others, our work comes solely through bishops and leadership and ourselves. So don't let that happen in little old Thatcher and Safford! Stay involved and reach out. Remember Bro Carter haha. 

Hmm, other than that, we helped one of our excommunicated investigators move clear across two parking lots and a street. She's a nice and interesting lady...Isabell is her name. Anyway, she and her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend and us were moving things. They realized they didn't have a strap for their SUV and they were going to buy one real quick so we could move the mattress. Well I suggested that E Ramirez and I just carry the thing over to Isabell's new apartment. Haha so soon enough we were both strolling down main street in Ephraim past a stoplight carrying a mattress! Haha gotta love being in small towns.

This week we're having a zone conference in Richfield with Elder Arnold of the Seventy. Apparently (use that loosely...rumors in this mission are worse than rumors in Thatcher) Elder Arnold is the one that's been going to different missions and announcing iPads and Facebook. While I was on exchanges this week with Elder Berven in Mt. Pleasant, we got a ride from an RM who served in North Carolina. He said just before he left they approved Facebook in the mission, and they had to spend a mandatory 1 hour each day on Facebook, and they had to use their own from back home and "missionary-proof" it within a week. He also mentioned that it's like Facebook stalking but worse because it's kind of real haha. He said in their planners they would just write "Facecreep Time" for laughs haha. Anyway, we'll see what the truth is this week, if Elder Arnold announces anything big.

well, until next time!

Love,

Elder Payne!

 

Kelly's Baptism!

My goodness what a rewarding week we've had! Kelly's baptism was all finalized and good to go! It was a little tricky trying to coordinate between the now three wards that he's involved in. He just moved from the Gunnison stake to elko nevada, but he attends here in ephraim haha. So we had a couple bishops there and lots of supporters! There was a pretty big crowd, about 30 people or so, including two more of our investigators, Manny and Patricia! Plus one of gunnison's investigators, who is Kelly's niece, came as well! Kelly's ex-brother in law baptized him. The baptism went very well and despite some nerves, Kelly came up clean!

It's was special in a different sense this time around. Usually when the investigator we've been working so hard with goes down into that water and comes back up, I get the goosebumps and the spirit is super strong. This time I didn't get that feeling. It felt more as if it were a little over due...as though the baptism had already happened long ago. Recently I've been trying to change my vision on missionary work. Instead of focusing mainly on baptism, I've tried to change my main focus to repentance because baptism is merely a symbolic reflection of the change that has already taken place in the investigator's heart. Repentance is where the true change happens, and if the investigator doesn't understand that, he or she is just getting wet at their baptism and it doesn't mean anything.

So anyway, that's how I felt at Kelly's baptism. I realized that he has truly understood to the best of his knowledge the power and vitality of repentance. He mentioned to us one lesson how concerned he was that he couldn't feel or recognize Godly sorrow for a past sin, and he was worried that he couldn't be forgiven because of that. haha he's very sincere and wants to do what is right! He's been repenting long before we even met him. Those are my favorite converts (if I'm supposed to have a favorite)...the ones that have already experienced the change of heart and you don't have to convince them of anything. They just accept anything that comes their way with faith and diligence! I love it! And that's what Kelly has done.

The day before his baptism, he was feeling doubts and questions on all sides and he was super nervous for his interview. Before we all got to the George's for the interview, he decided to just relax and read from the Book of Mormon. He opened up to a random verse and read Alma 34:31. When he shared that with us, it blew me away. Such a perfect verse for him at that time! Heavenly Father is a curious one! Such a small but significant blessing of reassurance for Kelly!

Yesterday I got the privilege of confirming him a member of the church. It's just like I told president Center in my letter to him a few minutes ago...the confirmations and blessings that I've given on my mission have been some of my most sacred and favorite experiences on my mission. It's amazing and humbling to witness the Spirit work that directly through me. All I have to do is sanctify myself and demand the Spirit to speak the Lord's will to the individual. The rest is just me moving my mouth. I'm rest assured more and more that giving blessings must be one of my gifts of the Spirit.

This week we were also led to the door of a young spanish mother named Tania. We got the referral a week ago at sports from the Mount Pleasant north elders. Well long story short, we drove over to her apartment and knocked on the door. She answered and immediately let us in. We barely were able to introduce ourselves before she started up her whole life religion-based story. I'm getting a little better at understanding spanish, but I still couldn't quite catch a whole lot of the conversation. Basically she's been praying for someone to come visit her and her family, and she asked us with real intent and with an honest heart what the Book of Mormon is all about. We set another appointment for tuesday, so we'll see where it progresses from there.

It's good to hear about what's going on back home. Happy thanksgiving everyone! I'm looking forward to the package mom thanks!! and thanks for mckenzi's address. haha Keith I hope your efforts to reach out to your non member lady friend are going well. I haven't heard anything about it, but I was able to share some of the same advice with everyone...and your own situation...with the young married ward yesterday in a talk I gave to them. Hope you don't mind me sharing that! haha

Love,

Elder Payne!

 

Funerals and Interviews

We've had a pretty slammin week this week, not gonna lie. In fact our whole district is tearing it up right now! We should be having 4 baptisms this weekend if everything goes well, one of which will be Kelly on Saturday! We've been busy and teaching all week and have almost doubled the amount of lessons taught. It's been great! We taught Manny yesterday which was really good because we haven't been able to catch him for like 2 weeks! He's still kinda in the same spot, so we're gonna try to meet his parents and show them what exactly Manny has been teaching and have them sit in on a lesson. We're trying to pull an Alma 20 out of this (more or less, but hopefully less) so hopefully that will work out! Kelly is doing really well and has taken off to Nevada for his new job. He'll be back on Friday for his interview and Saturday will be the big day for him! We're sooo excited! The George's are just one of the awesome families I've met on my mission...yet they're the only ones to have fellowshipped two different investigators at the same time. That's where we taught Manny last night, and they fed us stroganoff and "Grandma Bitsy's" banana cream pie! We're well taken care of here in Ephraim. We have about 28 or so offers for thanksgiving. I'm afraid it will be a flashback to last year in Cedar. Too much food! But definitely lots of blessings. The people here are wonderful to us, whether or not they go to church.

Well this week a local 2 year old hispanic boy had a seizure in the bathtub and drowned all within about the 30 seconds that the mom was out of the room. Anyway it has really shaken up the society, especially all the hispanics in the county. The funeral was on Friday, and since we have a few Spanish investigators that were going, we thought we'd show up as well. They did it at the Catholic church here in Ephraim. Kinda interesting...I've obviously lived in Thatcher my whole life because I've never been to a Catholic service before. Thing is though that the whole place was packed, so we had to stand next to the door squished between a bunch of hispanics way in the back. It was roasting in there and my legs were tired and I couldn't really understand what all was going on too well because the whole service was in spanish, except for like 5 random minutes when the pastor spoke in broken english. Anyway, there was definitely a different spirit there...a sullen and cultural spirit. It was a cool experience! Unfortunately though Irma, one of our investigators, got super pumped up to cultivate her Catholic roots because of the funeral, so she's cooling way off now. Darn! But her kids are still okay with being taught, so we'll keep going by. There names are Miguel and Erica, 22 and 20 respectively. Also, we haven't made real contact with Patricia since the funeral, so we're hoping that the same thing won't happen to her as well. She was set to be baptized this Saturday, but we'll have to push her back at best now. Keep up the prayers for her!

Other than that, we had interviews with President and Sister Center before/during our district meeting on Thursday. Well they got a little behind schedule and I ended up starting my interview about five minutes before I was supposed to start the district meeting haha so needless to say, I had a short chat with both of them. They're really awesome though! I can't imagine how tough it's gotta be to handle 180 kids haha. They do a wonderful job. Anyway, as far as interviews go, I got to interview a 10 year old girl for baptism over in Gunnison on Saturday! Her name is Hunter, and her dad of course joined us. She's definitely a spunky little girl and she knows a lot about the gospel! The dad went to EAC back in '79, which was cool to hear. It's always strange when I introduce Thatcher to people and then they gasp and say "I used to live there!" That's only happened a handful of times on my mission. Anyway, Hunter is good to go for baptism. I don't know if I should say this but it's nice to have an ex-assistant in your district. Elder Stewart and Elder Becerra doing work over in Gunnison! They found seven new investigators two weeks ago and taught over 30 lessons last week and are planning to have 10 on date for baptism by the end of this week. They're crazy!

Well that's about all I can think of for this week. Thanks for the pictures of grandma and grandpa! Tell them hi for me and that I love them! I'm looking forward to that package, I won't lie! And Keith when you're done hunting over there, come to San Pete and get rid of some of these deer please. They're everywhere! haha

Love,

Elder Payne!

 

Things are Picking Up!

Hi family! And whoever reads this on moms blog too haha much love to whoever. Anyway this has been a good week. Kelly is on date for baptism on the 23rd of November! He's pretty solid...we've gone over everything except tithing and a couple more commandments. I won't go into detail but I've just been super impressed at how open he is with us and he's not trying to hide any details from his life that would prevent him from being baptized. That's a strong sign to us that he's truly honest in heart and that his heart has been changing. I love teaching people that have already made changes prior to meeting the missionaries. They're so submissive and faithful! That's what teaching Kelly has been like...all we have to do is teach him the gospel and invite him to incorporate it into his life, and he takes care of the rest by himself. He understands repentance now, and he's living it. He's gained a testimony that the gospel is true, and although he still struggles with little things like being interested in the Book of Mormon, he tries and tries to overcome those little things. He'll be moving to Nevada for a new job later this week, but he is going to come back on the weekends to keep in contact with his family and friends and to go to church. Things are looking good for him!

Patricia came to stake conference yesterday and she's doing super well! The only problem right now is the fact that we're getting rushed on the lessons since there's less than two weeks until her baptism as well. We'll pick it up though. Our district had a slammin week too! We put 5 investigators on date this past week and we found 9 new investigators. I got to do a baptismal interview for a 13 year old kid named Johannes for the Manti elders. He's solid, and he loves to ride his super expensive scooter with friends and play x-box, and he lives with his Finnish grandparents. Nice! Anyway I'm really starting to see the momentum pick up for the Lord's work! It's exciting! 

On top of that, this weekend was a big regional stake conference for pretty much our whole mission as far as I know. The stake president called us and asked me if he could scan a few pages of my planner on Tuesday. In the Saturday night adult meeting they had an "informal" meeting that was more interactive, very similar to what Elder Bednar did with us a couple months ago. Anyway, pres Averette showed a few pages of my planner on the big screen and everyone in the stake got to see what the past few days have looked like on our schedules. On one day we had only one appointment, so I had written down a bunch of names to visit and off to the side I wrote "Pretend these are appointments!" haha and pres Averette pointed that out to everyone in a humorous way. We got a good laugh out of it haha. He exhorted everyone to help us out and get us more appointments. What adds more to that is that this week the mission released new Standards of Excellence, which are basically the "numbers" we strive to achieve, like how many baptisms a month and lessons a week, etc. Well the new standards have specifically incorporated reactivation and less-active work, so now we are expected to report every week on not just non member work, but less-actives too. I'm glad the change was made! The standards dropped a little, which is okay with me because I rarely achieved them anyway. It seems more realistic and achievable now, especially since many areas have been split in half with all the new missionaries. Man, I wish this happened when I was in Buena Vista! haha

Hmm so things are definitely picking up, and although this email might make it sound like a lot is going on, it's still a step by step process. I'm still learning personally and I feel like by the time I leave the mission I'll be ready to start. A saying I always use is, "If you're not green, then you're old and dead and no good anymore." Gotta keep that greenie attitude and keep the fire for missionary work every day!

Love,

Elder Payne!

p.s. I didn't take any pictures this week! Shameful! So I'll borrow some from E Ramirez from the past couple weeks.