Hello everyone!!
For starters- Mom: I have NOT heard anything from dad for the past 2 weeks, so I really don't know what adventure you're talking about. I guess I won't find out till next week...
But hi!! It has been a rather productive week here in Tremonton, I must say. It's strange - we're contacting TONS and TONS of people, a lot of members, auxiliaries/presidencies, and lots of investigators. But our numbers in terms of lessons taught have slipped... The problem is that Elder Scoggin and I were teaching so many people at once and some of them moved, some of them dropped us, and the rest of them we baptized. :) So Elder Hall and I have really truly had to start from square one.
Another problem that we have been facing is that all of our work is in one stake. The South Stake has had work fairly steadily for a while now, and we're continuing to pick people up and cycle through them as they stop keeping commitments or progress. However, the West Stake Correlation has 2 very distinct problems. 1) They REFUSE to have a weekly meeting to correlate missionary work. This I don't understand. Outside of Utah, the missionaries will meet regularly with the ward council and discuss people to teach. But we CAN'T go to 15 ward councils every single Sunday. Thus the weekly correlation meeting was created. 2) A missionary about 8 months ago seriously offended a lot of the ward mission leaders by essentially calling them all lazy bums who don't know what the meaning of sacrifice is and walked out of the meeting saying "Now if you'll excuse me, I have stuff to do." Yeah.. There's definitely a noticeable distrust among the West Stake ward mission leaders and it's very apparent on the amount of work that we have going. Oh. There's a 3rd problem. 3) A lot of the stake records are screwed up in West Stake. We have had 4 people in the last 2 weeks that we have gone over and taught lessons to only to realize that they were all members with the baptismal records screwed up. So we go to teach them, spend time out of our day talking to them, and then they tell us that all their family have been baptized. They aren't making it up either - the west stake clerks just haven't input the data on a lot of them. So they're wasting our time. It's been very frustrating to say the least. But we've still got a fairly good teaching pool and an even larger pool of potential contacts that we're going out and visiting.
Uhh. So last Thursday we had district meeting and afterwards our district went out to lunch at Wendy's. When we walked in the door, there was an older man there that jumped in front of all of us in line, gave the lady his credit card, and said "Do NOT let them pay for themselves! Lunch is on me today!" Yeah. All 8 of us. 6 Elders (ouch) and 2 Sisters (who ate more than we did.. :) ). Members here are so crazy generous. Sometimes I just want to say no thank you, but our Mission President has told us that we seriously can't deny them. People get offended if you do. Apparently if they help us out they get blessings or something. I don't know. That's what they tell me.
Am I really running out of stuff to say!? I'm probably getting much fatter. In fact I know I am. I haven't weighed myself because I'm scared to. There's an Elder in my district who has gained 50 pounds since he came out on his mission, and he's only been out for like a year. He showed me a picture of himself before his mission - back when he had a neck... It's kind of funny actually. But I don't wanna puff up! GAH! I'd better start actually waking up or something and working out. Shhh....
GUESS WHAT!? I GOT SOME MAIL BACK!! I got a letter every day for 4 days straight! Elder Hall now thinks I'm some sort of player... But I had a good laugh about it. I haven't lost all hope in the postal service yet.
Umm.. The other day I got to speak at a missionary farewell! AND NOT like an Iowa farewell. A UTAH farewell. There were literally close to 1000 people between the chapel, completely full gym, and hallways. It was like speaking at commencement all over again. It was funny because when the bishop asked us to speak he definitely didn't say it would be for a farewell, nor did he say that half the planet would be in attendance. It was funny though. I got to talk about my pathetic little farewell that almost didn't happen. And they got a good laugh out of that.
I will keep Ryan in my prayers. Kid needs to shape up or something! He's probably spending too much time playing the bagpipes to go to school anyway. Let's be honest - that's more important anyway. :) I bought another load of 12 ties today from Leven's ... I hope this doesn't grow into an obsession. Elder Garrett, our District Leader, has over 100 ties, and he's sent like 100 ties home because he didn't have room in his suitcase for them. I shall NOT get that obsessed. I haven't gotten my haircut yet either! AHH!! I'm getting it cut tomorrow though. I look like a slacker right now.
We're praying for miracles this transfer. I guess all that can be done now is get to work. I love you and miss you all! And I hope to actually hear from Dad next week. Best of luck to Ben! And Cody! And Kepler! And.. Whoever else I haven't heard about!
Love,
- Elder Tyler Grant
For starters- Mom: I have NOT heard anything from dad for the past 2 weeks, so I really don't know what adventure you're talking about. I guess I won't find out till next week...
But hi!! It has been a rather productive week here in Tremonton, I must say. It's strange - we're contacting TONS and TONS of people, a lot of members, auxiliaries/presidencies, and lots of investigators. But our numbers in terms of lessons taught have slipped... The problem is that Elder Scoggin and I were teaching so many people at once and some of them moved, some of them dropped us, and the rest of them we baptized. :) So Elder Hall and I have really truly had to start from square one.
Another problem that we have been facing is that all of our work is in one stake. The South Stake has had work fairly steadily for a while now, and we're continuing to pick people up and cycle through them as they stop keeping commitments or progress. However, the West Stake Correlation has 2 very distinct problems. 1) They REFUSE to have a weekly meeting to correlate missionary work. This I don't understand. Outside of Utah, the missionaries will meet regularly with the ward council and discuss people to teach. But we CAN'T go to 15 ward councils every single Sunday. Thus the weekly correlation meeting was created. 2) A missionary about 8 months ago seriously offended a lot of the ward mission leaders by essentially calling them all lazy bums who don't know what the meaning of sacrifice is and walked out of the meeting saying "Now if you'll excuse me, I have stuff to do." Yeah.. There's definitely a noticeable distrust among the West Stake ward mission leaders and it's very apparent on the amount of work that we have going. Oh. There's a 3rd problem. 3) A lot of the stake records are screwed up in West Stake. We have had 4 people in the last 2 weeks that we have gone over and taught lessons to only to realize that they were all members with the baptismal records screwed up. So we go to teach them, spend time out of our day talking to them, and then they tell us that all their family have been baptized. They aren't making it up either - the west stake clerks just haven't input the data on a lot of them. So they're wasting our time. It's been very frustrating to say the least. But we've still got a fairly good teaching pool and an even larger pool of potential contacts that we're going out and visiting.
Uhh. So last Thursday we had district meeting and afterwards our district went out to lunch at Wendy's. When we walked in the door, there was an older man there that jumped in front of all of us in line, gave the lady his credit card, and said "Do NOT let them pay for themselves! Lunch is on me today!" Yeah. All 8 of us. 6 Elders (ouch) and 2 Sisters (who ate more than we did.. :) ). Members here are so crazy generous. Sometimes I just want to say no thank you, but our Mission President has told us that we seriously can't deny them. People get offended if you do. Apparently if they help us out they get blessings or something. I don't know. That's what they tell me.
Am I really running out of stuff to say!? I'm probably getting much fatter. In fact I know I am. I haven't weighed myself because I'm scared to. There's an Elder in my district who has gained 50 pounds since he came out on his mission, and he's only been out for like a year. He showed me a picture of himself before his mission - back when he had a neck... It's kind of funny actually. But I don't wanna puff up! GAH! I'd better start actually waking up or something and working out. Shhh....
GUESS WHAT!? I GOT SOME MAIL BACK!! I got a letter every day for 4 days straight! Elder Hall now thinks I'm some sort of player... But I had a good laugh about it. I haven't lost all hope in the postal service yet.
Umm.. The other day I got to speak at a missionary farewell! AND NOT like an Iowa farewell. A UTAH farewell. There were literally close to 1000 people between the chapel, completely full gym, and hallways. It was like speaking at commencement all over again. It was funny because when the bishop asked us to speak he definitely didn't say it would be for a farewell, nor did he say that half the planet would be in attendance. It was funny though. I got to talk about my pathetic little farewell that almost didn't happen. And they got a good laugh out of that.
I will keep Ryan in my prayers. Kid needs to shape up or something! He's probably spending too much time playing the bagpipes to go to school anyway. Let's be honest - that's more important anyway. :) I bought another load of 12 ties today from Leven's ... I hope this doesn't grow into an obsession. Elder Garrett, our District Leader, has over 100 ties, and he's sent like 100 ties home because he didn't have room in his suitcase for them. I shall NOT get that obsessed. I haven't gotten my haircut yet either! AHH!! I'm getting it cut tomorrow though. I look like a slacker right now.
We're praying for miracles this transfer. I guess all that can be done now is get to work. I love you and miss you all! And I hope to actually hear from Dad next week. Best of luck to Ben! And Cody! And Kepler! And.. Whoever else I haven't heard about!
Love,
- Elder Tyler Grant
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