He's Home!!

That first hug was the BEST!!

Read Matthew 14:22-33

So my week was pretty full of emotions! I have been the happiest and the saddest and the maddest and then the chillest this week... but like I said with the title you must read that story before reading this story. 

So I love this story because I can relate to it so much! So to help you understand this story, the apostles were sent on a boat while Christ went to go pray. They were rowing in a storm for literally hours. Then on the 4th watch, so between 3am and 6 am of the next day (lots of rowing right?), Christ starts walking out to them on the water! And at the point of view of the apostles it is pitch black with a huge storm and some lightning. So every once in a while they can see. So they are doing their thing on the boat and one of them sees in the flash of the lightning a spirit of some sorts. (I would be dying if I were there). And the first thing they hear is "Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid"  then "Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou bid me come unto thee on the water" Christ said "...Come" so Peter, the head guy, starts to walk out to Christ and will not keep his eyes off of Christ and he does very well, until (always an until with Peter) until he hears the thunder and feels the wind and the storm. Then and only then does he take his eyes off of Christ. If he had kept looking at Christ all would have been fine, but he didn't or couldn't, because of his fear. Fear is a word that I hate. Now if I were to say I fear the Lord that is a different kind of fear which is good, but the fear Peter felt for the "storm" or the "world" was bad. So Peter starts to sink and sink fast. What does he do? Pray or call to the Lord for help! (We should all do that). 

So my life has not been hard by any means. I can in no way compare my life to others but I have received challenges based on my personality and spirit that have pushed me to do better! So like Peter I have received my calls and my times to walk on faith and I like Peter have just looked away because of fear. 

So starting this week, like all of you know, I was put in a trio!! Super happy. Then we lost a missionary (he went home), so sad, and then we found out why, super mad. Then the week chilled out but we are covering 6 wards right now. I feel like a missionary in Utah. We have so much on our plates right now. It is very stressful, but I know right now I am starting to walk on the water and if I keep looking at Christ everything will be alright. 

We also did funny weird things that have pictures or videos that I will send.

My Week was Pretty Chill!

I found out I am going to the Buckeye Spanish branch to be in a trio! I am very excited. I love the two missionaries I am going to be with! 

I am super excited to see all of you in six weeks! I went to my old area to see a baptism and it was amazing! They are so wonderful!

So I Cut My Finger

Nothing really exciting happened this week other than we moved a new member into the ward on Saturday, and she is a single mom so after we had moved all of the stuff and everyone else had left she asked us to set up a few things. So I setup 3 beds and built an entertainment center. Elder Parker built other things and then they asked us to
build the trampoline. Side note: if you live in Arizona or ever plan on living there dont get a trampoline I have a three word answer for you DON'T DO IT!! But we were setting up the tramp and everything was going great and I was on one of the last springs and it slipped out of
my right hand and then cut my left finger bad! Picture will be shown at the end so if you don't want to see it don't look easy as that!! That was the exciting thing that happened. By the way I took this photo today it looked worse two days ago! I used super glue to seal it too!

My Week!

Conference was amazing! The church is true! Everyone needs to reread Elder Uchtdorfs talk about fear in the Sunday morning session, last talk. He talked about how we must not lead by fear and how no one will prosper by using fear and I have also been learning that while reading
the Bible. David dies for those of you who didn't know and he didn't regain his exaltation. We all need to follow the commandments. 

We also got a brand new 2017 Chevy Malibu with WiFi and lane correction.

The Rise and Fall of King David

So my week wasn't too bad. We helped a member make above ground flower beds. That aren't for flowers they are for palm trees... only in Arizona.. I had another gun pulled on me. Btw did anyone else see the video of the missionary who beat up his mugger?? Crazy right?? Well that wasn't me haha I don't fight back when stuff like that happens here.. it happened when we knocked on his door and he opened it and pointed the gun at me. (I say me because whenever we go door knocking I do one side of the street while my comp does the other side of the street. So we do it faster). He seemed very angry and as I was about to say have a nice day he asked very loudly who are you? And I said I am
a servant of Jesus Christ trying to deliver you a message. After I said that he put down his gun and said oh i better listen to this. I yelled at my comp to call him over and we walked in and teach him the restoration of the gospel. He didn't want us to come back but I know he felt the spirit.

Ok the title of my letter. I started at the beginning of the year to read the Old Testament. I have just finished 2 Samuel. And the story of King David is amazing, sad, heroic, idiotic, and down right helpful. If you need a refresher on this story start in 1 Samuel chapter 16ish. Well I have learned that it doesn't matter who you are. You are going to mess up. Now the theme of the Bible up to this point
is: prophet who is righteous messes up but repents and is exalted.
Adam ate the fruit, Moses with the stone, Samuel with wives, etc. the only thing is all of the people before David repent and are forgiven. David on the other hand does something really bad. Now everyone is going to say oh its the thing with Bathsheba.. no if he had done that and then just repented he would have been fine. The thing that killed him (spiritually) was when he had Uriah killed. The shedding of innocent blood is a denial of the Holy Ghost which is the only unforgivable sin. Ergo David messed up big time and he knew it. Then he spends the rest of his life trying to repent of what he did but he can't. We know that a lot of the book of Psalms is David singing to the Lord asking for forgiveness but he does not receive comfort for what
he did. Don't be a David, ladies and gentlemen.

My Week

My week went by really fast and the sad part of that was we just really biked and biked and biked and nothing came of it. We only have a limited number of miles per month and we are very close to going over so we have been biking a lot. I don't like that. 

I have been trying to lose weight without success I guess the members just feed us to much pizza. Don't ever feed the missionaries pizza!!! I can run a mile in 9 minutes and like 20 seconds. I think that is pretty good. 

I am about to go home and I have mixed feelings about it. I am also trying to finish the Old Testament before I go home as well which I am not going to make that goal. I am in 1 Samuel 16 and I am using the institute manual to help me understand it. It is reminding me a lot of seminary with Sister Mayne.

The church hosted a car show and this was the best car there. If you notice the steering wheel is on the wrong side!!

Lots of photos from zone conferences

 Elder Langi is the BYU football recruit

Last minute talk, Sun burnt face, tree climbing, weed eating on a Saturday

So I got the sun burnt face from climbing the tree and trimming it down. And from weed eating all on my service Saturday. We started the service at 9 in the morning and didn't leave until 5pm. What we would do is take turns with the weed eater and being up in the trees. A less
active in our ward needed her yard fixed up because her HOA was going to fine her. For the record I don't like HOA. And so we had to get all of it done that day. Her trees were mulberry trees. For those of you who don't know about those trees, they get very very tall and very long
branches. So we climbed up I believe to be 30 feet into these trees and began to trim them. And then when we weren't in the trees we were on the ground weed eating. These weeds were only about 2 feet high.
Nothing too crazy! So when we finally finished and got home. I noticed something happened to me that has never happened to me before. My face looked like a lobster. Ha I didn't know what to do. It didn't hurt.
Luckily because we are in Arizona olivera plants (sorry can't spell) are everywhere! I healed in a day! Elder Parker though did not! Lol he is still very red and in a lot of pain. I think I am now 2 shades darker than I was before! I'm really going for the Mexican look! 

So the last minute talk! At about 8:45 Sunday morning our bishop comes up to me and says that I am needed to give a talk because the other person could not. I had to give it on the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was awesome. Just before I got up to speak there was a
musical number that brought the spirit so strong. 
Well that was my week love you all! Email me!

Another Service Saturday

Sadly no cows this time. But we did do 3 or 4 services this past Saturday. The first one was really fun. So we called three priests in our ward and we went over to a part member family's house and dug a 30 foot trench. It was about 3 feet deep and a foot wide. And with Arizona
ground it's like digging in cement. So to soften up the ground we used the hose and poured water all over the ground. And it actually worked!
So the 5 of us knocked it out in a short time. Then we dug another trench but this one was only 5 feet wide and 4 inches deep so a lot easier. Then we mowed the only lawn in Arizona. Brought back a lot of memories. We started at 8 in the morning and didn't finish until 4:30 pm. And that day our dinner had canceled, but luckily we got a call from a member inviting us to eat. She cooked us Dorito casserole.
I loved it.

Elder Studyvin

Service Saturday, A Cowboy Hat and No More Service Shoes!

So just a fair warning to start this letter off. I am in the slowest English area in the mission. So we basically have no investigators, so to make up for it we do service for the members a lot. So this letter will only be about this last service project we had with a member who owns a dairy farm. :DSo this story starts on Friday night. I was about to go to bed at around 10:25. (I was kind of tired), and Elder Parker told me "Hey we will be waking up a little earlier in the morning." I thought to myself wait why but was to tired to question so I fell asleep. Well the alarm went off at 3 in the morning. I was so upset to say the least. I got told, "Hey wear jeans and a long sleeve shirt if you have one. Oh and you probably should wear some good working shoes." I
thought to myself wait I only have jeans and my tennis shoes which are okay working shoes. So I got dressed and the other missionaries we live with were coming with us as well. We drive for a least 30 mins away. I was so lost. We showed up to the dariy farm and I was so excited. So the member's name is JT. He told us everything we needed to
do. And my first thought was my shoes are going to die... and they did... so for the next hour maybe two we were feeding all of the cows. He has close to a thousand. We had his normal workers there to help us. So the last part of the service we had to take all of the calves from their little pens which only held one of them at a time. We had
to take them all out and herd them into a semi truck so they could be taken to some other dariy farm that had bought them. We all took turns which shift we had whether that was just herding them to the truck or being inside the truck doing all of that. It was hard, but a lot of fun!! So after we finished doing all of that, the member TJ said that
everytime he has the elders help him he choose one of us to give a prize to. He said the award for the best cattle herder goes to Elder Studyvin. I thought,"Wait what I have never done this in my life how is this possible." So my award was a cowboy hat! It's pretty sweet! So we were driving home and I was taking a look at my shoes.. my left shoe
doesn't have a sole anymore and the right one had a huge hole on the top... I was upset that I don't have service shoes anymore but I am happy I got the hat!!

So transfers happened last week...

So this last transfer was a big one... Almost the whole mission got affected. Long story short. I am not a Spanish missionary, I am not finishing Elder Johnson's training, and my area is out in the middle of nowhere!
My new companion is Elder Parker. We actually go home at the same time. He's awesome.


First week in English. We slaughtered a pig. Played lots of board games. Taught a few lessons.
Slaughtering the pig was a lot of fun. We got to watch it die and then gut it and clean it and then the next day we cut the pieces of the meat. I wanted the bacon and the ribs.


So we have a member that is a stay at home dad and he always asks us if we have time to play a board game. Because his kid is only 3 our "dad" gets really bored so we play a few times.
We are teaching a lot of part member families. And we also are covering three wards.

Note from mom: He's in Goodyear, AZ which is west of Phoenix.

My Week!

We really didn't do much! We had been doing a contacting challenge! We ended up losing though so we got pied in the face! I still haven't gotten the photos yet! And then we went golfing well mini golfing to end it all up! We are having a good time in the ward but the members don't really want to work. And so we are going to talk to President and see what he wants us to do!

What did I do this week?

For reals I am having a hard time remembering what I did this week! Haha I'll think of it! I remembered! I went on exchanges with a Chilean elder! Picture below! We wrecked show and put some of his investigators on date! And he told me about something big that is happening to missionaries all over the world! We are getting a special broadcast on the 25th of January to all of the missionaries around the world! And they are going to change the missionary schedule for the missionaries. And we will plan in the mornings and only have personal study. Those are the only required things to do and we are supposed to be out of the house by 10 am but if we want we can do an hour of companion study and then an hour of language study! But we only get 30 minutes of lunch and we have to be out of the door! Our mission president is testing it out right now with our zone but all of the world will get it on the 25! 

Good Week!

We had a good week! And on Sunday a man walked into church and asked us what he had to do to get baptized! I love that! That all he wants is to be baptized and do it now! We told him about the harder commandments and he said he was fine with that! I can't wait to teach him tonight! 

Johnson and I had our first "fight" this week, it was very childish of both of us but we talked through it and we saw both sides of the argument and we are good now! I am really trying to figure out how to help him with his studies! Any ideas? 

My shoes busted through this week while biking. It was fun so I bought new ones!

New year, new me???

So we had a really good week! But some sad moments as well... Ha! So we had a lot of lessons and we taught a lot of people.. but no one came to church.