May 25th 2009

OK so Crescent city is absolutely amazing.
I have only been here for two weeks now but it is
amazing. The area is absolutely beautiful.
We do something know as basking in the spirit
where after a lesson we just sit for 5-15 min
just sitting in the spirit talking about how
the lesson went and what we could have done
better and decide what we should do next time.
We just started this transfer and
I got to say it has helped tremendously.
We are so into the spirit at that moment
that we are able to decide exactly what
is best for that moment. Since we have done this
are lessons have become twice as good. Not only
does it help us with the lessons but the spirit
stays with us longer and stronger. Not only that
but we have the best places to bask. We usually
just sit by the ocean and watch the waves and such.

It is esp amazing when the sun is setting and we
are basking, it truly is an amazing feeling.

Ok so we already have at least one baptism set
for this transfer. Its a part member family and
the wife has finally decided to be baptized. It was
crazy though. She had come to church and she started
asking us questions about different things mainly about
if she had to change who she was and everything and
she mentioned that she didn’t know if the church was true.
We talked to her for about 30min and by the end we were
a little worried because we had a lesson with her later that day
which was yesterday and she was questioning everything.
The moment we went into their home and right after the prayer
she said "I want to be baptized. What do i need to do to be baptized?"
It was so amazing. She even asked Elder Norton to baptize
her since her husband is not able to. Then the lesson was just
Absolutely amazing. The spirit was so strong. We set the date for June 20.
The last Saturday of the transfer. She has two kids that might be baptized
as well but we are not sure about them yet and we may have a few
others as well. We have one that is going to be baptized in July but they
are going to be baptized in Medford or something like that and them we
have one that will be baptized in September as soon as he turns 18.
This area is so amazing. I seem to always be on a spiritual high I love it.

My leg falling into the water was an accident but i should have
known better. We were playing around on the rocks on the
beach and they had an area were there was rock on either
side on a little pond of water so i climbed on side when
everyone else climbed the other side because it was much
easier and then i tried to stretch my leg across for a picture
and lets just say i am not as flexible as i use to be so I
came up short and my leg went right into the water.
It was cold water too.

Today we are going to a combined ward lunch and hang out
and then we are going to have a work and the glory marathon.
We got our hands on all the movies so we are going to watch them.
I am going to miss doing the athletic stuff that I have been doing but
I will live. Saturday we did service almost all day long. We didn’t even
pros up until 7:30 at night. We originally only had one service project planned.
We went to that and we had to cut a hedge that was about 20ft tall and 30 yards
long back about 3 feet. It was pretty fun actually but then we got a call
seeing if we could do someone’s lawn so we went and did that.
Then we get another cal asking if we could help them out and so
of course we said yes. So we were cutting down trees and pulling
up roots and pulling all the limbs behind a truck and piled them up.
It was a lot of fun but by the end i was exhausted. They fed us dinner
then we showered and got dressed and went out and taught one lesson
then came back home to end the day. It was great.

Well that’s pretty much it i think.

Love

Zachary

May 25th 2009

I will take some pictures no worries. I think i have already taken more
pics in this area then i have in both of last areas. lol.
Which i guess isn't all that great. lol. No i was not in my
suit when i fell in it was a p day so i had shorts on so my
clothes didn't even get wet at all which is good. Well except for my shoe.

What do you mean about the order of things. We go in pray teach and then pray.
We pretty much follow preach my gospel but at the same time the lessons are
different for everyone that we teach. For instance one of our investigators
is taking a world religion class. HE is the one that is going to baptized
in July. Well he likes facts and things like that so when we taught the
apostasy we gave him facts with dates and everything. There is a talk
called the Apostasy by Hyrum Smith that just lays everything down starting
from 0 AD till the restoration of the gospel. It is an amazing talk. It shows
that the time that the church was restored was the only time that it could be
restored. So we shared a lot of the dates to him and he really enjoyed it.
So we do different things like that it just depends on the person that
we are teaching, what they need and what they are like and what they understand.

We get to go to the temple twice a year and we are actually going this transfer
in a couple of weeks right before president leaves. The whole mission is going
to the temple again. I can hardly wait for it. The mission secretary is amazing
she is so funny. She is great. It def is going to be interesting getting all
the new people in the mission to see how many things change with the new president.
President Stoddard is a pretty rich guy he owns banks and stuff and he treats us
from time to time. That will def be missed but i am kinda excited for the new
president as well it will be very interesting to see what he will bring to
the mission.

Will you not be able to use the raps for a missionary lesson then?
Did you run out of time? Thats too bad i was looking forward to see how it would go. o well maybe next time. Well till next week...

Love

Zachary

Pictures

Today I got an email from a woman in Zach's area How sweet of her
What he sees from where he lives



I think he looks at least a half year older and even more like his brothers


Near where he is staying


This sweet lady made me so happy.

this is now open

May 18, 2009 Transfer

Crescent City is absolutely amazing.
We can see the ocean from our house.
We live with members.
I have only met them once because they
went out of town the day after that i got there
but it is a pretty nice spot.
I heard about the tsunami
and all that but no one is really too concerned about all that.
It can get really foggy and we have a rather big area again
so we travel quite a bit. I have a ward now though so that is nice.
There is actually two wards in Crescent City.
We have so many investigators i love it.
This is the first time that i have more than one real investigator.
We have so many close to baptism as well. One has a date for the 23rd.
So that's awesome. My comps name is Elder Norton and he is pretty Cool.
He is from New Mexico. He is also a roper and a football player
so we get along just fine. So far i have only had one comp
from the north all the rest have been southern boys.
I have not had a comp from utah either which is kinda cool.

Lets see so far i have had the opportunity
to see a ton of red woods. We just see them
as we drive around our area. I was also able to go to Trinidad beach.
It is not in our area but we went there today for p-day it was amazing.
The water is kinda cold though. My leg slipped in on accident.
My entire right leg went in. It was crazy.
There are so many things out here to do.
I don't think i will be playing many sports
but needless to say i will be making mom happy
because all the things that we will be doing
we will have our cameras with us.
I forgot my camera today though.
We played Frisbee golf today. It was actually kinda fun.
This is going to be the only p-day that we have with the
entire zone though. We are an hour and a half away from the zone.
So it is basically 4 missionaries and thats it
. We are in what is known as banishment in the mission
but everyone wants to be there. ITs awesome.

Love

Zachary

May 11, 2009

Alright so we first met Norma Jean Willis just walking around
and we offered our help she said ok and said nothing more.
Then we ran into her again and she said that she may need some
help later on so we gave her our number and left.
We didn't hear from her in awhile and then one day we found a letter
on our front porch saying that she needed help so we went over there
and we just listened for hours. Day after day we just listened and
offered our service. We helped her move and everything.
Then slowly we started to just leave simple thoughts and she become
interested and we just started to teach her the lessons and she has
gone strong ever since. She has given up smoking and coffee.
She has gone through a lot but we tried to be there every step of the way.
O by the way she makes some pretty good salsa but yours still has more flavor.
The baptism was a bit scary at first. It started at 2 but we met her at 1:30
to prepare her. Well come 2 only the mission leader was there. Come 2:30 about
6 people were there but no one that was a part of the program.
But then around 2:45-3:00 everyone was there. Norma picked all
the songs, she picked the speakers, she did everything. All we did was make
the calls. We had one person speak on baptism and one speak on the holy ghost.
Then come the baptism she made everyone nervous. She had to go to the bathroom
so on the way to the font her stopped and no one knew about it so everyone was
waiting and i was just playing in the water.lol. Well she came and she was baptized.
She bore her testimony and the Branch welcomed her. It was awesome.
It was by far the best feeling ever.

I don't think i have ever let you win Scrabble
nor would i let you win i am much too competitive for that.lol.
I could just see you "dancing" around on one foot.lol.

Well get better soon alright.

Love

Zachary

May 4, 2009

Well i bet mom loved the two movies. She loves photographso anything with pictures she will love. Thats awesome that you thought of that.

The swine flu has not affected us at all. There has been a few cases in
Sacramento but nothing else. So we have been pretty lucky. As far as i
am concerned no schools have closed. For some reason i wouldn't think
that our school district would close. It always seems to be one of the
last schools to close. There has been talk about taking all the missionaries
out of Mexico. Did they do that? I heard a lot about all the other things
about church not meeting and stuff like that. We actually had a big thing
on it with the branch so i have actually heard a lot about what is going
on in that area.

That sounds like mom for ya. She could never sit still for nothing.
Of course you both have that trait. I remember time after time that
i have had to stop the both of you from doing one thing or another.
One time in particular that i remember about you is when we were helping
with a move. You were sore and hurting and it hurt going up stairs and
the guy lived on the second floor. You so felt the need to help out so
i just ran up the steps and handed the stuff to you so you wouldnt go
up and down the stairs. So it seems the both of you have a problem
with doing nothing and just relaxing.

Oh OK i just remember talking to josh about going on a mission before
i left and i just wondered if he had started or not. Jason has been
a member for a least a year. That's how long i have known him. You
know Jason Floyd?
Manchester England... Luke would go to a place
like that. He would be perfect there too.
That's crazy that the practice dome collapsed. What coaches were hurt?
Are they going to have to replace coaches? We have only had light
showers but of course light showers to these people is considered
to be coming down hard. lol. I will be able to tell you where I
am going on the phone next week.

The only thing that happened that was really exciting was that
the person that we have been teaching passed her baptismal interview
so she will be getting baptized this coming Saturday so i kinda excited
about that. O the latest news i don't think the area will be closed after all.
The APs came down again to assess the area but we showed them that there is plenty
of work to be done so i do not think that the area will be closed after all so
that is awesome.

I forgot to give the pictures last week but i will send some this week ok.
I will work on it. I will even make a point of it ok.
Take time to rest. You need it. So dont push yourself.
If you push yourself your recovery will only take longer.
Wow i haven't seen the Judges in forever.
I don't even remember the last time that they came over to the house.
Whats up with them. How are they doing. Ben would get hurt in a skate accident.
So i guess that answers that question that he is still skating.

Love

Zachary