Howdy!

Okay, so we just got out of the temple here in twin, even though
it is really small it kind of reminds me of the Mesa temple, I'm
not sure why.

I really wouldn't be surprised if Mom had a count down to
Mother's Day that is to the hour. I still have control of when
I call...if I call...I think if I did that Mom would come up here
and choke me or something. I think we will be calling after
church(your church).

So Nancy sent me a letter and told me that the Spanish branch is
now a ward, that is so cool. Our Spanish group is hoping to
become a branch pretty soon. But it will be weird to not call Rio
Salado a branch it has always been The Branch, and now it is
The Spanish Ward, so what are the times for the wards?

We had a super awesome bonfire last Tuesday. We spent around
a week setting it up and it was so well packed it was crazy huge,
crazy fast. So what we did was, there was a tree stump and we piled
dried tumble weeds around that, then we put a layer of ten or so
railroad ties, then a layer of small to medium sticks and branches
then another layer of 10ish railroad ties, it was so hot that I was
standing 15-20 feet away and still got slightly burned. After it
was all out, on the ground, what was burned(grass and stuff)
reached out around 15 feet at the farthest point, but it was so hot
that it dried out and killed the grass about 25 feet at the farthest
point. It was really impressive and I have a picture of it and the
thick black smoke looks so cool.

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to baptize someone.
It was a child of record, unfortunately not one of our
investigators. It was pretty fun though. I was supposed to
give a talk but, what happened is that the boys uncle was
supposed to come and do it but never did show up. So we
thought we would have is dad do it but, he doesn't speak a
whole lot of English, and the boy doesn't really understand
much Spanish(his mom speaks English). I happened to have
an extra pair of underwear, I was on exchanges in Sun Valley
the day before and still had my stuff in the car. So I said that I
could do it. It was pretty fun for me because that was the first
time that I had ever baptized someone living. I have done
them in the temple for the dead but never for someone living.

So that is pretty much everything going on here in Wendell.

I think today we might go race go karts so that will be fun.

Love,

Elder Paxton.

More about Wendell

We live in a Vitt-mobile travel trailer and it is on someones farm,
haha just kidding it is a single wide mobile home, but it is
surrounded by farms. The lady bugs in the bathroom are real
and so are all of the other spiders and bugs in the house. It is a
pretty nice place to live, just a little warm now that things are
warming up out here. We will need to buy a fan to keep cool.

You can take the boy out of the zoo but you can't take the zoo
out of the boy. This week we have obtained a few more pets,
a snake and 5 frogs, all of which we caught outside of our house.
the snake we put in a box and we forgot that snakes can climb
up the corners, so it is probably in our house somewhere.
We try to feed the frogs but they are kind of lame. We gave
one frog the black widow and it tried to eat it, but no matter
how many times it shot its tongue at it, he couldn't eat it.
We also gave them some worms which they just licked.
They do eat the lady bugs real quick though.

Elder Sandstrom is from Mesa, around Signal Butte and
Warner, so WAAAAY out there. He and I get along very
well and we like to talk about things in Arizona. It is really
funny when we tell people that we are from the same area.
They like to ask if we knew each other before the mission,
we tell them that we come from a 4 million person city.
People like to think that the whole world is just small towns
where everyone knows everyone.

So last night we taught an awesome lesson, well we taught
the restoration, but this guy had a question from the last
time we taught him,. Last time we taught about praying,
reading the scriptures, and going to church. We told him
how important it is to have all three, so last night he asked
us if he had to quit his job to go to church, because he really
wants to go. It just really stood out to me how much he wants
to go to church and how well he remembers the things that
we taught. We have a couple of other really good investigators.

We need to get going, we are going to have a huge fire,
pictures and videos will be taken.

Love,

Elder Paxton

Lots of answers to Mom's questions...

So our house isn't really a house...we live in a trailer, I am
officially trailer trash now. It is actually pretty nice. There
are a lot of lady bugs in the bathroom. We are kind of
breaking the rules, we have a pet, and it is a black widow
spider that lives in an apple juice jug. We feed it flies and I
poke it with a stick, it is pretty funny.

Elder Sandstrom and I have gotten up on time every day except
one so far, which is nice. We have quite a few investigators.
We have one who we went over the baptismal interview questions
with, and she answered every question perfectly, except for the
last one which is, "are you ready to be baptized". It kind of
frustrates me when people say that they aren't because most of
the time they are super ready but they don't realize it.
So far there is no sure way to help them realize it. So we are
hoping that she finds out that she is ready real soon

Last night we taught a lesson to a bunch of guys, they all live
in a trailer together and E. sandstrom said that originally it
was just one guy there and the others would go and hide, but
slowly more kept coming and listening. Last night there were
4 guys and one of their girlfriends, so we feel really good about that.

We are about 30 minutes away from Twin Falls and I think we
go to the temple about ever other week which is cool. I think it
would be better for me to go and buy some shirts up here,
you know how picky I can be with things like that. Also I will
need a couple extra dollars for some new pants. The non suit pants
that I brought that say they are the same size and as far as I
remember they fit the same as the others, don't fit, so I gave
them to Elder Sandstrom since I figured I probably won't get
a whole lot skinnier.

There have been a few times that I wished I had a camera but not
too many, and Elder Riquelme said he would send me the pictures
that we took, so hopefully he does that so you all can see me being
a real cowboy haha.

There is a quite a bit of Spanish work in this area and there are
English Elders too so I won't really have to do very much English
work. I think President read my mind at last interviews. I really
want to keep on improving my Spanish so that I can amaze all the
Mexicans. All the time they ask my companion, who they know
speaks Spanish, if I do as well, I just say 'pocito' and then when it
is my turn to teach sometimes they are amazed at how much
(which isn't that much) I do know.

So that is pretty much all that is going on in my life here,
that I can remember.

Love

Elder Paxton

Playing Cowboy and on the move again...

Please send all mail to the office that hasn't already been sent.

Last Tuesday night we got transfer calls and I am going to
Wendell. I am kind of excited to go and at the same time not.
There are about 400,000,000 cows there and all of the
Hispanics work in the dairy and can't go to church because
the cows have to be milked. I am going to be with Elder
Sandstrom and I have heard that he is really cool and a
good worker, but he has trouble waking up on time.
It's a good thing that I don't have a problem with that
too much. I also think he is from Arizona as well so that is cool.

I had a great time putting my bike together, it looked
really cool sitting in our house, the other guys never
did get any because the members are totally lame.
I did have a good time taking it apart again and putting
it all back in to the box. I am pretty sure that Elder Sandstrom
is kind of lazy, but I will really push the whole bike idea.
I would love to be able to ride again.

This morning we got to go do some real farm work.
We started off with feeding a bunch of cows and horses,
We loaded a flat bed truck with 2 one ton bails of hay,
and then went to the field and peeled them apart layer
by layer while the truck was driving itself. Then we had
to tag and brand a couple of bulls, so we encouraged them
to go in to a thinging(very technical term) to hold them
with an electric cattle prod and then I got to brand one,
which smells as good as you imagine. And tag one, give it
a super cute blue ear ring. That was pretty fun, especially
when I hit E Riquelme with the prod, haha he got me back,
it really doesn't hurt that bad when it is just one zap. We had
fun being cowboys for the day though.

I don't know if I have told you about our cats that live outside
of our house. One is now totally prego and the other one likes
to go for rides in the engine compartment of our car. One day we
went out and came home 15 or 20 minutes later and we heard it
meowing and we opened up our hood and there it was haha.
Most recently we went to Mcdonalds and when I was backing up
e.r. I saw it running away so it may be gone for ever.

This week has been a pretty fun week for us. Also one of our
investigators peaced out one day and took his landlords 4 wheeler
and owes him around 5000 dollars and everything in the house,
no one knows where he went.

I am really hoping that when I get home today there is a pretty
package on my porch. Also send more short sleeve shirts or
money for them, it is now the season of no jackets. Haha,
yesterday we didn't wear any and it was snowing pretty hard.
Elder Pauni and I had a contest to see who could hold their arm
out the window the longest, while driving 70, we had sheets of ice
on our arms and they were red for a long time.

Well its time to go enjoy our free bowling.

Love Elder Paxtonius Maximus

Finally some pictures!

Chris finally sent home his memory card from his camera.

There were some pretty interesting pictures and videos
on the card. I am only going to post a few.

These are a few scenery shots from his current area in Oakley.

Here is Chris and his companions doing some service on a farm

Elder Paxton

Elder Pauni

Elder Riquelme

In a post earlier this month Chris talked about some of their service projects


He talked about picking up dead birds and animals

I will not include the video of them picking up the dead rabbits.
That can be something Chris can share with you when he gets home. I think it might upset the women and children if I post it here on his blog


Moving minks during mating season

From the looks of this video it is not all work for these elders!

It was great to get to see him and his companions. I hope it won't be quite as long next time before we get to see more pictures.

Momma P