Dear Family and Friends,

All right I'll probably be way short this week.  It's so hard to think of things to write especially when the weeks go by so fast.  Anyways, I guess the biggest news is we've commited one of our brand new investigators to baptism already.  We had her scheduled for August 11, but she has to attend church two weeks in a row so we've moved it back to August 18.  She couldn't make it to Church because she was double shifted for work but she's definitely ready and committed for baptism.  So I'll have my first baptism soon!

On August 16 we're going to have transfers, so I'll probably get a new companion then and take over this area.  They might keep my trainer here for one more transfer though, I honestly have no clue at the moment.  Next Friday we're getting a new car since our Corolla right now have a lot of miles on it.  We'll be getting a brand 2012 Corolla so it'll be way nice.

On August 7 to 11th is the county fair.  We're going to have a booth in it and the other missionaries in our Zone don't really want to help which is weird.  So I'll probably be doing that a lot, which means we'll have a lot of new potential investigators and so forth because they'll be coming to us instead of us coming to them.

Anyways not much to say besides that.  It's been really hot, like usual.  We've been just working and moving along.  We haven't had any major experiences lately that I can remember.  Last week was kind of slow so yeah.  
I'm glad to see the fam' is doing well.  Doesn't seem like anything too new is going on.  Pretty much the same thing around here.  I'm sure things will get a lot more eventful here once transfers start happening and so forth.  I'm kinda just used to the work now.  Weeks are beginning to feel like days, everything just goes by so fast.  I'm having lots of fun though, I'm getting to know our investigators and members better and I'm beginning to talk and not be so shy.  Anyways I'll be in leadership positions in no time.  And then I'll be home in no time haha.  I'll try and write a little more next week, sorry that this email is so short, I'll probably write back dad's snail-mail with something longer.  Anyways everyone stay safe!

Sincerely Elder Ellis

Dear Family and Friends,

More movies for the Batman series?  I thought this one was supposed to be the last one, maybe I misunderstood you though.  Anyways, I heard about the shooting in Colorado opening night, sounded pretty tragic.

Things are...all right here.  We biked this past week, first week biking.  I'm extremely sore, but it's not too bad.  It's been over 100 degrees every day here now.  Theres a heat wave and it doesn't seem to be ending.  15 miles a day, 100 degree weather.  It's a great work out let me tell you.  It's really miserable, BUT ANYWAYS.

I got the shoebox full of goodies, thanks!  I didn't say send me the Pikachu shirt...but ohwell.  :|  I'm loving the Yo-Yo's, I'm already getting to the point that I can start to do tricks and stuff with them.  Such a loser, but ohwell!  I love how you threw in the Rubik's cube too, I can solve them pretty easily now.  I'm the most happy about my shoes though, now I actually have lounge around shoes I can wear on p-day.  (Our apartment's carpet is gross okay?)

The work is moving pretty slow around here.  We're still teaching lots of Less Active families, I'm getting more acquanted with the ward members now though so thats good.  Generally your trianer is supposed to be with you for 3 months, but he might be getting transferred next transfer.  Which means that I'll probably be taking over the Gardner area already.  We had interviews with the Mission President a few days ago so yeah.  If I pass my lessons off, I might actually start training others already.  I'm not too eager with my lessons though, if I pass those off I have to be District Leader and stuff like that.  ):  I just want to be a normal missionary for now haha.  We're getting 22 new missionaries next transfer which is a lot.  The next transfer after that we're getting 20.  So we're going to have more missionaries coming in then leaving, which means the Missouri Independence Mission is growing still.  We have an estimated 250 missionaries right now.  Which means we're actually  the biggest mission in the world.  (Missionary wise.)
 
Let's see story of the week...last Monday after Dinner we did some tracting.  We were looking for an old pair of investigators from a member referral, we had no luck.  But on the last house we met a lady called Rachel and she let us teach her a lesson.  We taught her the plan of Salvation and she was pretty receptive about it.  She doesn't belong to any Church but she has this video called "The Biggest Gamble" and she pretty much quotes every argument to us from it.  (She gave it to us and we watched it in the Apartment later) She believe pretty much that it's only through Jesus Christ that we are saved.  (Which is true even for the LDS Church)  But she believes in only Repentence and Faith.  She didn't really think works mattered.  And then she started bringing up Hitler and stuff and we were like ohgosh.  We visited her again that week though, she had already read two of the phamplets we gave her, read at least past 2 Nephi.  She even marked and highlighted things in the pamphlets and BoM.  (My companion said this is the first time he's seen someone that was so into the reading and he's been out for 20 months now.)  She still has the same arguments and things but she knows a lot more about our Church so I think we did a pretty good job planting a seed.  We would love to teach her some more, but her husband doesn't want to have anything to do with religion and he has no idea she even talked to us and stuff so she said we can't meet anymore.  We're going to give it a while, but hopefully we can teach her more someday.

I finally got my Church card which means I can buy groceries and stuff which is nice.  One thing I keep forgetting to ask you for is a CD player though, and maybe a small set of speakers.  I'm not sure if you still have my lime green CD player at home or anything, but some music and some CDs would be lovely because I basically have none of that except my companion's music.
Anyways I better get off now.  Hope everythings going good.  I'll write you again next week!

Dear Family and Friends,

 

Okay so time for that weekly letter I suppose.  Hmm I really don't know what to say.  There's a lot of stuff happening.  We usually visit about three people a day and I've had some bad experiences, and some good.

I've met a lot of cool families, just yesterday we were visiting an investigator called Brent, he has cancer and he's really struggling with it.  We don't teach him much because he's in a really tough situation with God right now.  He feels like God has forsaken him and he still has faith in God, but he's just so mad because he's been struggling with the cancer and a recent divorce for so long.  I told him about Aunt Kim and how she died of cancer and it was cool cause then he started to open up to me and connect a little better.  We really just try to fellowship him and stay friends, we might go to Liberty Jail together soon which will be really cool.

One of our investigators got in an accident recently, she had to cancel dinner with us and go to work, and our her way she crashed on a Vesta.  She's not sure what really happened but we went to her later at 10 PM and gave her a blessing.  It was really cool because after we did that, she said I feel better already.  She also recognized that Satan is after her.  She said that he's trying his hardest to not let her change her life, but she said she's not going to give in this time.  I think she might be our first baptism, she's definitely ready, and we also have a few other investigators that are ready.

The other night we taught a guy named Doug, he hasn't visited from Missionaries since 2008 but we managed to just pop up on his door at the right time and he let us in.  We taught him the Plan of Salvation, he's really been struggling lately because his mother had suddenly died, so we taught him the Plan of Salvation to help him get through that struggle.  He said that when the missionaries taught him back in 2008 he was struggling with life, and then we showed up again when he was struggling again.  He's really curious about religion and knows so many different theories, but it sounded like what we were teaching him was completely new even though he had received the lessons already before.

Other than these few investigators, we visit a lot of less active families, a lot of them are really struggling with things and we're trying to get them back at Church.  One family we met was crazy though, the husband had invited us to kinda help his kid's learn about the Church so that they could have that in their life.  They were really nice but then the wife started going on about a bunch of stuff.  She basically said the Church was just for power hungry men and then started going on about Bishops who had affairs and stuff, and how the Church just raises girls to be submissive and stay home.  It was really sad because of how warped her view on the Church was, especially because the Church isn't like that at all, but because of her family she had such a negative view on everything.

I had a few more cool experiences, but for lack of time I'll probably start to wrap this letter up.  Kansas is super hot, we had the car last week, but we get to ride our bikes this week.  My bike is way nice (it was like 700 dollars geez.) but it's definitely going to have to be good if it's going to last for two years.  The people here are pretty nice, but some people are just rude.  People scream at you from their cars and etc.  Doors slammed in my face and all that nice stuff.  But we don't tract from door to door much anymore.  The Church is really trying to have missionaries stray away from that and instead they're trying to get you to have member referrals and stuff because that's really the best way to find new members because they already have friends in the Church and have that fellowship.

In order to drive cars here we have to pass a test which is called Becoming a Level 5 Teacher, we have to memorize points of each lesson and a scripture with each point and then pass it off.  I've been trying to do that because I want to drive a car asap.  My companion is District Leader though so its nice because I just have to pass it off to him.

Anyways, yeah go ahead and send my shoes Mom, send whatever else you want, It's pretty boring around here so I'm totally okay with random toys and stuff.  (I actually kind of want to start Yo-Yo'ing and get good at it on my p-days so you should totally buy me a Butterfly Yo-Yo and like a guide on Yo-Yo'ing, I'm totally serious okay?)  Anyways logo shirts are okay which is why I told you to send me some of my old shirts, but yeah.  I can't really think of anything else I need from home.

I guess I'll wrap this letter up now, things are pretty good here, I'm sorry I can't write more but the Library is way busy today so yeah.  Love you lots Family & Friends, stay well. 

 

Sincerely Elder Nathaniel Ellis

Okay okay okay, so It's time for a big letter.  Wow, it was a REALLY long week.  Yet, it feels like I just got here so that's great.  I guess i'll start from the beginning which was last Wednesday, I'll kinda skip out on MTC stuff, I'll tell you about that later one day.

So Wednesday we had to get up at 1 AM for our flight, showered, finished up packing, and then hauled my 100 pounds worth of luggage down 4 floors.  We ate breakfast in the dark abandoned cafeteria, we had some cereal, it was a nice little snack.  Eventually we drove to the Salt Lake City airport, on the way we saw the fire in Highland?  I'm not sure where it was but it was a fire and it looked pretty dang awesome at 4AM in the dark.  We got to the airport and then we went to the McDonalds there.  We heard music playing and ate McDonalds, it was like heaven since we hadn't had anything besides MTC food for the past 3 weeks.  The music was also nice, I hadn't heard something besides a hymn forever.

Skipping ahead a bit we flew on the airplane.  We had to fly to Denver and then to Missouri.  To Denver, I had a Sister Missionary sitting next to me, and then to Missouri I was completely alone so yeah.  I had no chances to talk to anyone about the gospel but it was all right, I listened to the people across the aile talk and it was pretty interesting.  As soon as we got out of the plane suddenly a blast of heat hit me.  It was intense.  The humidity was crazy, Missouri is definitely not Utah.

For the rest of the day we got to go to visitor centers.  First we went to the new Kansas City Temple, and then we went to Liberty Jail and the Independence Visitor center.  The air conditioning in there was amaaaaazing.  It was a cool experience and I could definitely feel something different about both of them.  We went back to the mission presidents house, did some orientation and then it was time for bed.

Woke up the next morning and it was time for transfers.  I waited around a bit until my companion/trainer finally came.  His name is Elder Meisenheimer, he's pretty cool.  He looks a little like Kira's ex boyfriend Abe, but more...mexican?  Anyways.  I've been assigned to a little town in Kansas for the next three months, it's called Gardner.  On our first day I unpacked and then we went to go to do some appointments.  We don't usually call ahead to anyone, we just show up on investigators doors and they usually let us in.  In Gardner we aren't really focusing too much on new investigators, most of the things we focus on are inactive members. 

For dinner we went to a family called the Jensens, they're really cool, they have 3 boys and a girl.  It was nice going into an actually nice place for once.  (Our apartment is like, terrible.)  They brought an investigator for us to dinner, her name is Liza, she's taking care of her friend's little girl named Denver, Denver is abused and her mother is in jail but Liza can't adopt her and really wants to.  Liza has already taken lessons from the Missionaries before, her mother was so anti that she get baptized.  Fortunately she doesn't care about her mother now so I think Liza is ready to commit to baptism soon.

Sorry my brain is a little scattered, so many things happened, but thankfully I've got it down in my journal.  I met a lot of part-member and less active families, so we've been seeing how they are and leaving them with a little message.  One family we visited was the Cocrofts, he's less inactive and he's really cool.  He's really funny and he kinda looks like the one guy on Jurassic Park that did Law and Order for a little bit.  His brother works at American Crew so he ended up giving me a bunch of hair products to help me with the ladies, it was hilarious.  He has a daughter named Prestley, she was afraid of me.  :(  She warmed up a little, but she still doesn't like me.  Hopefully a few more visits though and she will! 

Yesterday (Sunday) we had dinner at the Livellas, it was really nice,  He works as a national salesman for Sennheiser sound or something like that.  He showed us his studio downstairs and said we were free to come over whenever.  He was grown up as a mormon, but fell away from the Church and has been trying to come back since 04.  Since then he baptized his two daughters, but his wife is still not a member and he tries not to bug her about it.  Secretly she wants to take the lessons from us, but she doesnt want anyone in her family to know about it because she wants it to be a surprise and have no pressure from anyone.  Its going to be awesome because we're going to start teaching her at someone else's house and hopefully she'll get baptized which would just be awesome for Brother Livella.

Kansas is HOT.  For the past few days theres been record highs, the temperature was about 103-108 for the past 4 days.  And I dont have a bike yet so we had to walk everywhere.  I've been walking about 5 miles a day in this small town.  I sweat like crazy.  I've lost 10 pounds already despite the amount of food members are feeding me.  We get to drive a car this next week thankfully though.  (Temps are cooling way down though, week I had to walk was terrible, go figure.)  Agh what else is there for me to tell you guys..

Anyways things are going pretty good so far.  I'm having so much fun and meeting so many people.  It's amazing how much my prayers are being answered.  I'm having so many extremely powerful and personal spiritual experiences.  I know that the gospel is true and I hope I can convey that to other people now.  Keep me in your prayers everyone and hopefully I'll be safe!  By the way I look hideous on my blog, what is up with that.  :(

Don't be shy, send me some letters, I'm getting plenty of email but I would love some letters cause I can reply to them better.  :(

PS.  I'll send some pictures home soon maybe.  You should send me some family photos though Mom, I'd love to have those around. Allright I'll stop writing now, sorry this email is a mess but its so hard to think right now!  D: