Rambling Jehovah's Witness, Zone Conference and Giving Up Cigarettes

Dear family and friends,

      

         This week's been a little bit slower now that Cyndi's baptism is over. On the day after I e-mailed you all we had a zone conference! It was amazing seeing Elder Mortimer and the Cottonwood elders again! We took some pictures after the meeting was done. Elder Mortimer and Elder Bell switched companions so Elder Bell's previous companion, Elder Vaughan (the elder with an interesting haircut not to Elder Mortimer) is now Elder Mortimer's companion just like I'm Elder Bell's companion when Elder Mortimer used to be my companion. Because I'm now part of Elder Bell's "posterity" we had to take a picture of all the elders that Elder Bell trained that were at the zone conference.

 

        For those of you who are reading this and have never served on a mission before (for those of you who have served a mission you can skip this paragraph since you already know how this goes) what happens when you first get into a mission is that you are "trained" by a more experienced missionary who shows you the ropes. He's officially called your trainer but other missionaries would refer to him as your "daddy" because it's like you are being born into the mission. Inexperienced missionaries are called "greenies". You're considered a "greenie" for 3 transfers (18 weeks) and if you get transferred (which means you get moved to a different area) after your first area you still have to be trained. The missionary who then trains you is referred to as either a "step-trainer" or your "step-daddy". Even when you're an experienced missionary your trainer is still referred to as your "daddy". So Elder Mortimer was my trainer/is my "daddy" and Elder Bell is my "step-trainer/step daddy". Whenever a missionary is in a zone conference with other missionaries that he's trained missionaries will often get together and take "posterity pictures" meaning pictures of said missionary and all the other missionaries that he's trained.

 

That's what happened during the zone conference. Elder Bell took a picture of his "posterity". He says he's trained 7 missionaries (including me) and of those 7 missionaries he's "step-trained" 2 of them. Not all of his "children" were there at the zone conference. It was really cool nonetheless. I asked Elder Mortimer about some of our investigators in Cottonwood and Elder Vaughan asked me about some of our investigators. We also got new phones which is why there's a picture of a phone on the blog. It's big news in the life of a missionary. The texting keyboard looks really cool and our numbers are still in our phones!

 

Right now we're trying to find new people and while we currently don't have an investigator with a baptismal date we do have a progessing investigator! His name is Andy Manning and he came to church yesterday! He was even early. He stayed for two hours and he liked church. He currently works in the military as an air force inspector. I think what he does is inspect jets. Yeah I need to get to know him a little bit better. He's been keeping up on his reading assignments which is cool and we're still trying to figure out what he needs exactly. We learned that he's quitting smoking on his own. There's a really cool story behind that.

   

 So his dog got sick so had to take it to the vet and as he's waiting outside the room he said he prayed and told God that he'd "take the next step" in coming closer to Him if his dog lived. As soon as he opened his eyes he saw a "No Smoking" sign. So ever since then he's decided to not smoke. Pretty cool huh?

 

Oh and before I forget I just got back from doing a zone activity. So every missionary in our "zone" (which is a specific area where a bunch of missionaries serve within a mission) came up and we had a volleyball tournament. My team got all the way into the semi-finals before we lost. I did pretty good myself. The highlight though is that we got to play against our mission president's team, AND WE WON! I led our team to victory on that one. I served the ball in the no-man's land and they couldn't figure what what to do. I think we got 9 out of our 14 points just from my serves. BOO YEAH!  Not only did President Beck play but Sister Beck was on the same team as well. Oh and the APs played too. The team we lost to had one of our APs who I think is either 6'5 or 6'6. Afterwards we played basketball and then got dressed and did this. Pretty cool.

 

Oh and before I close we met a crazy Jehovah Witness guy on Saturday while we tracted. I was on an exchange with Elder Kelley. He kept rambling on and on. He was extremely annoying!

 

I love you all,

 

Elder Boothe

Pictures from Zone Conference 01/2011

From left to right: Elder Vaughan (Elder Mortimer's current companion), Elder Mortimer and me

 From left to right: Elder Bennet, Elder Brase (in the back), Elder Vaughan, Elder Bell and me

 Elder Mortimer and Elder Bell switched companions so we decided to have a picture together

Our new phone!

More Pictures from Surprise Arizona

Most of these pictures are of the baptism of Cyndi, a nice lady that Elder Boothe and Elder Bell have been teaching, and her children. Please read Elder Boothe's previous post if you have any other questions about these pictures.

Two Months

So as of Sunday I have been in the mission field for two months! Wow time flies when you love your companion. Elder Bell rocks and he is a fantastic example of humility and patience. On Saturday the 15th Cyndi Hargis and two of her children, Cody and Rebekah, were baptized into the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was a great experience and it's people like Cyndi that are the reason why I'm serving. The baptism started on a stressful note since there was a baptism right before ours and that baptism went late. Once we got the baptisms rolling it was a very spiritual experience. Elder Bell did the baptisms and I gave the missionary presentation with my district leader, Elder Beard. The Spirit was very strong when I recited the First Vision and even some of the members were amazed by how much I'd grown since the time I got here. That really meant a lot to me.

 

        On Sunday I got to celebrate my two month anniversary by confirming Cyndi and Rebekah. Cody wanted the bishop to do his confirmation. I was pretty nervous seeing as how I'd never done a confirmation before, but once we laid our hands on Cyndi and Rebekah's heads I felt the Spirit wash over me. Man that was amazing!

 

       So on Monday we spent our p-day going up to Wickenburg which is a relatively small place that has the highest number of wealthy people per capita. I found that a little difficult to believe at first since the town was small and looked rustic. The really rich people live out in the boondocks and they don't show off their wealth either. The member that told me this said that a lot of the millionaire ranchers live here in the winter and he also said that a lot of celebrities go to rehab in Wickenburg. So we went over to the Stake President of Wickenburg's house, which is where the sister missionaries currently reside. He actually had a soft serve ice cream machine, and the biggest pan collection I've ever seen in my life. Before we went there we toured downtown Wickenburg, which for the most part was pretty boring. They have a few displays of the old pioneers and as you can see some of the missionaries decided to goof off. The missionary kissing the hand is Elder Beard, my district leader and the elder pretending to dance is my companion Elder Bell. The only other thing worth mentioning about Wickenburg is that we were fed lasagna out of a dutch oven.

 

  So there's this new mission policy that's been going around where each companionship is required to go to mormon.org and browse around for one hour once a week. It's a very uplifting experience watching all the videos and things and Elder Bell and I have a few ideas about how to use it with our investigators.

 

  Something else to mention is that on the night before Cyndi got baptized we went over to her house just to check up on her and while we were talking to her her youngest son Tanner made a temple out of legos. What was even better is that he put GUN TURRETS ON THE TEMPLE! Oh my goodness that was so awesome and worthy of mention that I simply had to tell you all about. Too bad I didn't get a picture of it though.

 

Well I love you all and am grateful to hear from you. I pray about you all everyday.

 

Love,

Elder Boothe

Cottonwood and the Beginning of Surprise

Elder Boothe with the Connollys, the Wonderful Couple He Stayed with in Cottonwood

 

 Christmas at the Connollys with Elders Mortimer, Boothe, Martinez and Hair

 

 Elder Boothe and Elder Hair (probably on a comp. exchange)

 

  Fooling Around with the Spanish Speaking Elders

 

  Elder Boothe with One of His Favorite Recent Converts: Angela Cooper

 Elder Boothe and Aussie Cooper

 

 Elder Boothe with the Coopers

 

  Elder Boothe with the Valdez Family

 

 

 Elder Boothe and Francis Valdez

 Elder Boothe with Trainer: Elder Mortimer

Elder Boothe with His New Companion Elder Bell

 

 With New District Leader Elder Beard

With Elder Kelley (district leader's greenie)

 Informal Pre-Baptism Pose

Anti-Soliciting Lists and T-Shirts

Dear friends and family,

 

It's another week in the life of Elder Boothe. Has everyone had a good New's Years Day?  I'm assuming that this is the case since I haven't received any letters this week. Fortunately I did get mail from Dad and Grandma Boothe today. Thank you both so much! I hope I didn't come across as rude or demanding. I just love mail and I lvoe hearing from my family.

 

So one of the coolest experiences this week happened on Thursday. I was at a part-member family's house and the part member family makes T shirts for a living. The reason why we were over there was because we were doing service. I washed the screens while Elder Bell moved the t-shirts and the hats around. So a t shirt is made by someone having an image on a frame, the frame gets a bunch of paint and you put that on a screen that you press down on for eight screens at about 350 degrees and BOOM BABY a t shirt is born. Well after that's done someone has to wash the frame. It's actually pretty cool! I had to use three different spray bottles, wipe it down and then wash it down with a pressure washer. Oh my goodness that was so much fun! I enjoyed spraying everything down. It was quite therapeutic. I wouldn't mind making t-shirts as a side job. It actually seems quite appealing.

 

Okay so enough about that. We've been going through a lot with the Hargis family. Cyndi got strep throat on the day she was going to get interviewed for her baptism (which was yesterday) so we moved the date to Tuesday. One of her children isn't getting baptized because we determined that he's just not ready yet. The other two (Cody and Rebecca who are her older children) will be getting baptized with her on this Saturday, January 15th. Even though Satan's trying to stop the baptism we are determined to make this happen. Cyndi's determined too, which helped build our confidence.

 

Love,

Elder Boothe

 

P.S. Oh and one more thing. Next week the library will be closed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day so I'll be e-mailing on Tuesday next week instead of Monday. Since I still have time the people in Surprise are anti-social! There used to be a law (in Surprise only) where we could only knock on certain doors because people could sign up for anti-soliciting lists. The law got revoked but a lot of people don't know that. We're also not allowed to knock on doors that say "No Soliciting". This is the only zone that has this problem since I've been told that nobody else in the mission has to go through this.

First Transfer: Surprise!

I GOT TRANSFERRED! That's right. I got transferred, not Elder Mortimer. It came as a surprise (tee hee, you'll see why I'm laughing in a minute) to all of us. Speaking of surpise that's where I got transferred to: the Surprise North zone within the city of Surprise, Arizona. Surprise is way different than Cottonwood. Cottonwood is a small mountain town with only 30,000 people and a lot of dogs. Surprise is significantly bigger (though I don't know the size of the population) seeing as how it's got two zones in it. Surprise is also a much more affluent area with significantly less dogs and all of the houses in our assigned area are boxy suburban homes. Surprise is also in the western border of my mission and is supposedly a warmer place than Cottonwood. So I moved from the northern boder to the western one. 

 

      My new step-trainer is Elder Bell. He's from Lacy, Washington which is a small town just north of Olympia. He's been out for 20 months and he's lactose intolerant. The weird thing about that is that he claimed that he got it on his mission. There are six kids in his family and he is number four. He loves musicals (his school did Les Mis and he was Monsieur Thenardier) and he says that he wants to write as a hobby. He and I are getting along great and I'm very happy to be his companion.

 

   I am currently living in an apartment with my companion and another companionship: Elder Beard and Elder Kelley. Elder Beard is our district leader, he's from Blackfoot Idaho and he's been out on his mission for about as long as Elder Bell has. They've both been in the Surprise North area for a very long time so it's hilarious to see how they interact with each other. Elder Beard likes to sing, play football and motor sports, motor sports and more motor sports. He also claims that my mannerisms are eerily similar to a companion he served with for 10 1/2 months. He's awesome and it's great being able to bounce jokes around with him and Elder Bell.

 

   Elder Kelley is from Spokane, Washington (half of the missionaries in our district are from Washington) and he's even greener than I am! Seriously it was weird seeing all the new greenies (that's the name for inexperienced missionaries who come straight from the MTC) during the transfer meeting. That used to be me eight weeks ago! Anyway Elder Kelley is a self-professed "clean freak" (I'm not insulting him. He called himself a clean freak so I don't feel bad about quoting him) who launched a crusade to rid our apartment of filth. Our apartment's clean now since it got inspected today so he's pretty happy about that. Elder Kelley is also a great cook and he frequently talks about budgeting his money and always looks for the best deals when shopping so I feel confident in saying that he's good with money.

 

   We started off the new year with a baptism! Her name is Liz Collum and I didn't get to see her until the day of her baptism. Right now we don't have a lot of firm appointments so we're trying a lot of different things to increase the number of people to teach. As of now we are currently teaching a single mother named Cyndi Hargis and her three children Cody (12), Rebecca (10) and Tanner (8). All four have a baptismal date for January 15th. We're fairly excited!

 

      Speaking of baptismal dates I am going to miss Francis Valdez's baptism for the 8th! :( I'm really not happy about that since both Francis and I have come a long way since I first met her. I will also be missing the baptism for Ally Aeschliman who was a 13 year old girl with a baptismal date for the 15th. I'm also going to be missing Angela and Aussie (Aussie is the girl we baptized on December 18th). They were so awesome and I have a lot of good memories with them. I got to say good-bye to them both, which was kind of sad. I forgot to bring my camera with me so you won't be able to see the pictures I took until next week.

 

    Surprise is a car riding area but since Elder Bell and his previous companion (who is now in Cottonwood where I was) Elder Vaughan already used up their miles we had to walk, ride bikes and get rides from members. For those who don't know what I'm talking about missionaries who ride in cars have a certain amount of miles alloted to them every month. If we go over the alloted mileage then next month's allotment decreases. In our area we get 600 miles alloted every month. Since Elder Bell already used up his miles we walked a lot.

 

           The weather here in Surprise has been pretty bad. It rained for three days in a row! I even had to buy a rain jacket which is something I thought I'd never have to do in Arizona. We even rode our bikes in the rain. Fortunately two of my Christmas gifts consisted of a hand-knitted scarf and gloves (thank you Grandma and Grandpa Boothe) plus a member loaned us leather jackets so I've been keeping warm. Now that the New Year has come we can use our car again so now we're riding in the car again which is really nice.

 

        Just like in Cottonwood I'm covering two wards: The Willow Canyon ward and the Sierra Montana ward. Willow Canyon meets at 8:00 AM and Sierra Montana begins at 2 PM. Yeah that's a lot of church. Elder Bell and I had to take naps between wards.

 

In case you're wondering why I didn't e-mail yesterday it's because I'm using a public library computer and the library's computers were "down" yesterday.

 

Love you all,

Elder Boothe

A Picture Says 1,000 Words

 Candid shot of Elder Boothe

 Elder Boothe's graffiti art on his last name

 Elders Hair and Boothe, Christmas 2010. Elder Hair is a Spanish speaking missionary in same district.

 Candid Shot of Elder Hair

Christmas Pose with Elder Mortimer