October 8th, 2012

All right time for another letter I suppose. This week was all right. Of course as we all know this week was General Conference. I don't know where you got the assumption we didn't get to listen to the Saturday Conferences, we definitely did. Conference this week was like...the Superbowl for missionaries. It was pretty fun.

So this week we got our monthly miles cut in half. We used to be able to go 1800 miles a month, but now we can only go 900. Which is really inconvenient because our area stretches out super far. Plus our house is about 5 miles from any actual towns that we work in. And Paola is a good 20 miles away. Because of this, our work has slowed down, because we can't simply go where we want now. It's really stressful and kind of disappointing but oh well. We'll manage.

Anyhow, because of the lack of miles now we've had to do a lot of tracting. Honestly who likes tracting anyways? All in all though we had a pretty good week. We got a new investigator this week named Ben. He had missionaries stop by his house before but he said he wasn't interested. But then he saw a commercial and he decided that he wanted to hear about it now. So we gave him what he wanted, the lessons. And he's now decided to be baptized. He's not anywhere close to being converted yet, but with work he'll get there. He kinda seems like a go with the flow kind of guy, so I don't want us to rush him and get him into something he doesn't really know yet, we want to literally convert him.

Conference I guess was the highlight of the week. For the Saturday session we decided to watch conference at the Church in Paola. And because of our lack of miles to go anywhere, we were in Paola the whole day. But Conference takes a big chunk of the day away so it was a pretty relaxed day. The first session of Saturday was pretty cool. they talked a lot on some really serious and touchy subjects, like abuse, sexual sins, and so forth. Of course the announcement about the mission age requirements going down was pretty intense as well. It was funny watching the faces of the people at conference when the announcement was made, they were blown away.

The second session of Conference on Saturday was a mess for us. We had gone out to lunch and left the Satiellite on and so forth at the Church, but when we got back, it wasn't working anymore, and we had no clue who to call about it or anything. (We were the only ones that actually were at the Church to watch the morning session that day.) The older gentleman that was in charge of everything eventually came to the Church after we attempted to go to the library to watch the afternoon session (That endeavor failed because the library closed at 4 that day.) But we got back when the older guy was there, and he just took us to his house to watch the rest of that session.

Afterwards we went back to the Church to help him fix the Satellite and get the Priesthood session going. Before priesthood session, both Gardner and Paola wards had a combined dinner at the Church which was nice. There was a lot of food, but I could hardly eat anything because my stomach has shrunk a lot since I've been on my mission. I brought my blanket for the morning and afternoon sessions and so I had it there when the priesthood session was going. Me, my companion, and a member Brother Sargent had a good laugh about the blanket. Brother Sargent ended up inviting us over for the Sunday sessions of Conference because no one else had, and it was pretty fun. I brought my blanket.

Anyways all in all it was an ok week. We've been just trying to work and be obedient. Conference was a nice break for us, and now we have P-day, woohoo.

Last week was all right. We've actually had transfers now and I ended up getting a new companion. Funny that I'm already on my third companion. Seems I'm having a lot more companions that everyone else that I came out with. My new companion is named Elder Top. He's from Albany, Oregon, and the best way to describe him is, a hipster. He's 22 and before his mission he went to the University of Idaho getting a music major. He plays Trumpet and Piano, and does Jazz music. He's a pretty interested person, sometimes I hate him, sometimes I don't. But he's a really good missionary. The reason I call him a hipster is he has some interesting clothing choices. He's really into skinny ties, weird fabric ties and so forth. He also wears slap bracelet watches. (You know those slap bracelet things we used to buy at the DI? Now they have those, but they're watches, actually pretty cool.)

Now that I have a new companion, I'm basically completely taking over the area of Gardner and Paola. I'm not the "Senior Companion" but I basically am. I'm helping Elder Top come on in and take over the area. Honestly there's not a lot going on lately. We had a surge of referrals the last two weeks, but now it seems we're getting dropped by investigators and so forth. Our main goal lately has been trying to find some more people. Elder Top has always had pretty good success with tracting, but unfortunately it doesn't really work well for the Gardner area. We went tracting a bit the past few days and we've only gotten one potential investigator. We're trying to work more with the members and get some good referrals from them, but for the rest of the week we have an all right schedule. We have some people that our awesome ward mission leader wants us to start seeing and I've set up some appointments with people that we haven't seen for a while.

Elder Top also had the same trainer as me, Elder M. It's funny because we talk about him a lot, but Elder M. was a lot different with Elder Top than me. Elder Top almost makes Elder M. seem like this super mean guy, but I thought Elder M. was super nice and fun to work with haha.

Things are going well though, just trying to get the area started up and introduce Elder Top to the area. We work all right together, though sometimes he simply drives me crazy. Anyways, I need to write my mission president now, and then I'm going to go and enjoy the rest of my p-day. I'm going to take my companion out to Oklahoma Joe's so it should be a good lunch.

Hey Family how is it going.

I guess its that time of the week again and I'm feeling lazier than ever to write a letter! Ohwell. Things are doing all right here, I guess the biggest news right now is that we're going to have transfers this week. I could be moving to a new area, getting a new companion, or anything really. And I have no clue whats really going to happen this time, it could be anything.

Let's see what happened this week though. We got a few more referrals again which is great. This time they're actually people who wanted to know more, instead of a random LDS member referring someone that's not really interested. My companion is really excited now that we actually have some good investigators so he's not being as apathetic to everything now. He actually wants to stay this transfer now so thats good.

There's nothing really exciting that has happened. We're just continuing to work and to be honest the days are just flying by at this point. I can hardly remember what even happened during the week when its over haha. I'm having a good time though. I just remembered one small thing I guess. The other day the Gardner ward had a big dinner/silent-auction fundraiser. There was lots of good food which is great for a hungry missionary of course. But at the end they had a vocal auction for desserts. Half of the members ended up paying like 20 dollars for a dessert, and then they ended up donating them to the missionaries. We have quite a bit of desserts. Plus my companion got a huge box full of junk-food from his aunt the other day too. We're pretty much drowning in junk-food and so forth. I guess we've also been volunteered to be judges at a chilli cook-off too. DONT WORRY THOUGH, I'm not gaining any weight thank goodness.

Okay anyways, there's nothing much to say, honestly if you want to know anything else just have dad ask me when we're chatting together. There's nothing much I need. I'm could use some more ties. Preferrably blues and oranges. Hinthint. Anyways, yeah I don't really need much and if I do I can just buy it. Anyways take care, ask me questions if you want longer emails or something.

Dear Family and Friends and Mom :I

Don't expect a longer letter cause yours was short Mom pffft. Well first of all since Dad was all worried about it, yes I did get my music thanks. It's nice, I like the Piano music you sent me. Paul Cardell I think? Anyways, this week went by pretty well.

It was kind of a fast week to be honest, nothing really exciting happened we just kind of did what we always did. Let's see, we had a couple of referrals this week. One referral was super weird. I guess some member helped a stranger at the side of the road, and then he ended up getting all of the guys information and then sending in a referral. When we got to the guys house, which by the way was literally in the middle of nowhere, he was kind of just like whoa. I didn't actually expect missionaries here. We've scheduled a visit with him on Saturday, he seems like a pretty nice guy.

Another referral we got, has a mansion literally in the middle of nowhere. He referred himself and wanted a copy of the Book of Mormon so of course we obliged. When we started walking up to his doorstep we were attacked by two rather large farm dogs. Was kind of terrifying. LOL Speaking of dogs, I'm tired of them in general. Everyone and their grandma has a dog here. My companion loves dogs though so he gets their attention and then I don't have to deal with them anymore haha.

Let's see, this week we had dinner with the family that we got baptized last week. It was really fun because they're actually really into video games and when they realized I had played basically every game in their collection they were pretty excited about it. Then we got talking about TV shows as well, they're LOST fans, aww yeah. They cooked us Chicken Alfredo because it's basically my companions favorite meal. He loves brocoli too though. I really hate eating brocoli. :I

ANYWAYS, not much going on around here. I'm doing good, having fun, working hard, etcetcetc. Transfers are coming up, my companion really wants to move to a new area. I think it's not going to happen though. And if he does, he's going to probably open a new area cause President likes to pick on him like that haha. Maybe I'll get transferred but I think Pres wants to keep me here a little longer so who knows.
Good to know that the Utes won, I heard from a billion different people that it was super close. Which is good because last year when we totally owned them it just wasn't the same. But the drama makes the victory so much sweeter. Anyways, take care. Keep encouraging Kira to get back into Church. Tell Ian he's doing awesome for me. I'll try and get some pictures to you all soon, but don't count on it. I'm quite lazy but I'll tryyyyyy. Anyways take care.

Sincerely Elder Ellis

All right email email email. This week was pretty good. It just happens that we had our first baptism. We've been working with an excommunicated member and his daughter, and he was finally given the go ahead to be readmitted to the church. The bishop just decided that they should do that baptism that day, so we received a call at 10 AM if his daughter could get baptized and we could get a baptismal interview. So we had to call President and so forth and we got everything taken care of. So now we have a new convert baptism because the daughter was 12, woo!

We also did exchanges this week. My companion was very adamantly against exchanges, as he's had some issues with it before. Something to do with bed bugs I believe. But our Zone Leaders have been on the District Leaders tail about doing exchanges with us, so we ended up getting forced into it. The deal was we would only do it a half day though. They really wanted to get us a new investigator because for some reason 3 attending sacrament, and 3 progressing investigators wasn't enough for the Zone Leaders. We ended up not getting anything done during the exchanges because Thursday afternoons aren't the best. On the brightside, we ended up getting a new investigator this week, and getting a baptism. So now I think the Zone Leaders are going to leave us alone.

Anyways man I can't think of much else to say now because those were really the main highlights of the week. Other than those happening, we've just been doing a lot of work with some less actives which there's not much to say about that right now. I did get Cecily's mail, but I haven't gotten the other thing yet. My companion was all like what the heck when he saw all these moustache things. Not going to lie I said what the heck too. I was totally expecting the package to just be ties when I picked it up and felt it. Granted I was right, there was one tie in there. I love ties by the way. I want more orange in my collection though.

Moving on, I don't really know what else to say so I'm just going to leave it like it is. I have to write to President anyways, for some reason he thinks I haven't written him in 4 weeks, but I've only missed the last week cause it was Labor Day. Anyways, time for another day of sports and so forth. Take care and I'll write again next week!

Dear Family

Another week down it seems. Time just flies by. Things are allright here, everything is going slow still, and because of the distance of everything we don't get too much work done. Let's see, last week was my first Zone Conference. Zone Conference's are pretty cool, but this one was really really long, a little too long.

My zone was pulled out during some of it because of a special opportunity we have. There's going to be a big Gladus Knight devotional, which is apparently a really big deal. They went through a bunch of rules and stuff so they want it to be perfect. But if we get an investigator there, we get ourselves a ticket, and I'm always down for a nice break. I'm thinking about trying to get a Part Member family to go, the W.'s. Brother W is an African-American non-member, who I think would really connect with Gladus Knight because he's also really into music. He sings for a bunch of different Church Choirs and so forth. His wife calls him a closet Mormon, he's pretty close to getting to the point he might join. We just need to try and get on a more personal level with him and become his friends so he will consider listening to us. He doesn't like strict missionaries who are uptight and instead wants to see us as just normal boys.

Anyways what else happened this week...we started to see a new person. His name is S., he's a less active member. But I don't think he really recalls anything about the LDS church. He asked us to take him through all the lessons so we're doing that. I feel bad for the guy, he has no family around here. He's still single. And he works with horses, so he really seems quite lonely. We want to get him involved with the ward and get him to make friends with everyone.

Yesterday was fun. I don't think I've told you how our p-days usually go so I'll go ahead and talk about that. Usually we sleep in on p-days, our apartment is so clean anyways there's nothing we need to do. We usually go to the library at 10 of course, but yesterday was labor day so the libraries were all closed. Generally after the library though, we go out for lunch. But we didn't yesterday, me and my companion are trying to not eat out anymore. The next tradition that's happened so far is we go to the Vitamin Shoppe. We always end up going because my companion always wants to try a new supplement and so forth. After doing all of our shopping and eating, we go and play some basketball.

Yesterday we had a lot of time because we didn't do the library, so we ended up playing 2 hours of basketball. I'm getting better, compared to when I used to just stand there. I ended up getting really sore from it too. And then the unique thing about Olathe Zone is we always play Volleyball with the stake members. I'm getting a LOT better at that. But it sucks when you get someone who's trying to play everybody's position. Volleyball usually goes for about 3 hours so after that we go home, shower, and then it's time to go to our dinner appointment.

Our dinner appointment last night was the C.'s. They're a really nice family with two young boys. They're really relaxed, to the point that it's a rule we can't go to dinner appointments with them in our proselyting clothes. And they always feed us a meal with bacon in it. Always. Last night we had burgers which were reallllllly good.

Everything's still going good here. Anyways yes I do still need music. Dad said he would work on sending me some. If you bought me an iPod and put some music on it that'd be awesome, but I still want CDs, because I need some music that we can play in the Car. Anyways music isnt really that strict, I can have seminary music. Really anything that is directly LDS church related is fine. For example if it's like a hymn being covered by someone it's okay. I'd really love piano covers of hymns and acoustic guitar covers of hymns if you could find any. But do hurry up so we have some stuff to listen to in the car.

Anyways to your other questions. As far as I know my clothes are fine. The collars of my shirts are getting stained, but that's unavoidable really. I haven't dry cleaned anything yet, but my suit probably needs to be drycleaned. Speaking of which, we probably should've bought me another suit, because I guess when General Conference comes around, we're going to have to be in our suits everyday until the next General Conference. This email is long geez, that should satisfy you for a while though.

Sincerely Elder Nathaniel Ellis

All right time for another letterrrrr.

It's probably going to be a short one...cause nothing has really happened in the past week. I think we're getting to the point where my letters progressively get worse and worse, sorry familio. Anyways, as I said last week, I'm now double-covering two areas that used to have a pair of missionaries for each. Paola and Gardner. Gardner you know about, just a small town with another small town 6 miles away, not much there. Paola on the otherhand is a huge area. We cover about 6 or 7 small towns. So every night when we go for dinner we usually have to drive about 40 mintues to the place. Which means that we spend a lot of time during the rest of the week when we're trying to find our way around.

Anyways I suppose the family I'll tell you about today is...the "H"'s. I don't even know if I spelt that right, but they have a weird last name. Anyways we had dinner with them just last night and they were pretty cool. Brother H is a hunter. He doesn't hunt with rifles and guns though. He hunts with a bow. His basement is completely filled with stuffed animals that he's killed all himself. He has 2 bears, tons of deer, anything you can think of. He even has an otter down there. He brought his baby downstairs with us and she started crying, I thought to myself. I would probably cry if I saw all this as a baby LOL.

Anyways Sundays are pretty fun now that we have two wards to cover. Guess who gets to go to 6 hours of Church of Sundays? This guy. It's gonna be especially fun next week when its fast Sunday and I'll have to go the whole 6 hours on an empty stomach. D:

Anyways sorry this is so short, I'm running out of things to say! We dont have many prospective investigators right now. So a lot of the time we're tracting on doors, which is just lame. And I don't have any fun stories from it, most people just aren't interested, but I haven't had anyone come at me with a shotgun quite yet.

Sincerely Elder Ellis

PS. The 109$ charge from Walmart was a GPS so yah.