Pres and Sis Yardley

I received a letter from President and Sister Yardley this weekend. They are delighted to have Chris in the Idaho Boise Mission. They included a picture of them with Chris. I think this was on the day he arrived in Idaho.

Momma P

Dear Mommy

This week and all the time here has just flown by. But it has been very
good and fun. I have some bad news though, I hit a person with my car
and I am going to be sent home tomorrow.
 
See you soon,
 
Elder Paxton
 
PS: As I am sure you already know I am joking as always. 
 
This week I went on exchanges to Ontario and I met a guy name Joe,
when we were on our way Elder Flores(my temp. comp) told me that
Joe says that he doesn't know about the church and isn't sure about
baptism. We were planning on teaching him about how being a
member can bless your life and such. So we get there and sit down
on couch and he tells us "well I've got a lot of news, I want to get
baptized, I am getting married this saturday (lives with girlfriend)
and I want to get baptized in a few weeks. So we were pretty happy,
I can see good things coming from him, he is really interested in the
temple and wants to work to go there which is really good,
something I didn't know is that once you are baptized you
can go to the temple as soon as you can pass the temple interview.
 
So I have never been more grateful for sister missionaries as I
am now. The house in Ontario is just plain nasty. Our little
apartment is nearly perfectly clean, sisters have lived there
for the last year or so.
 
My companion has been out for about a year he is helping me
with my Spanish, he speaks about as  much English as I do
Spanish, so we have some problems with communicating
sometimes but we get a long well.  There is another set of
missionaries in Caldwell but they are in a different stake
so we never see them.
 
P day is really boring, we have nothing to do and I don't
really enjoy doing nothing, but we clean everything
(house, clothes, car etc) and then pretty much do
nothing until 6 when we start teaching.
 
I am getting real hungry so we are going to go and eat now
so take care all.
 
Also I am staying very warm and I love the snow.
Except driving.
 
Love
 
Elder Paxton

Week 1 (again)

Hola everyone,

My p-day is Tuesday, since we have two temples is our mission,
President encourages that we go as often as possible. I went
this morning and as always enjoyed it, I love the Boise temple.

I have been trying to speak at least a little bit in every lesson.
This week we have taught 16 lessons, some of them were only
5-10 minutes long, but a lot of them were 30-45 minutes so I had
a lot of time to share some things in each lesson.

We have two people who say they want to be baptized, one
says that she needs to learn more before, and I just wanted to say
that is why we are here. The other is 13, I think, and his mom
is a Jehovah's Witness but says that she will let him if she sees
a change in him, like in school and his behavior at home.

My area isn't as rural as you probably think. Where I live is
in Middleton with a member, in her basement, but I am serving
is Caldwell. I live about 15 miles outside of my area.  It is pretty
cold, last night when we got home the weather was on the tv
and it said that with the wind chill it was below 0. I am inside
most of the time or driving so I am plenty warm, I am actually
grateful for the cold because it got us into a couple
of doors and we taught them lessons and have another
appointment set up.

So yesterday I experienced something new. Driving in the snow,
so far it is going fine, I am being super cautious. I have only slid
on the ice once and I was going super slow and was in a parking lot
so nothing happened. When I am driving on the main roads I go so
slow, people are always "flying" past but I don't want to waste
tithing money on me or the car.

I did enjoy my birthday cake and so did the other 10 or so
missionaries, they were all very grateful that it was my
birthday too.

I am really excited to be here and to learn Spanish, and to help
E. Castillo with English. From what I hear my branch hasn't had
any baptisms in about 6 months, but now we are going to have some
where around 30 in the next 6 weeks, they wont even know what
to do with all the new members. Also our branch is a lot smaller
thanI thought it would be, there is maybe 30 or so people, I didn't
expect it to be Rio Salado sized though. We spend a pretty good
amount of time with the new members and the less actives as well
so I am getting pretty close with the members in our branch.

I hope everyone is enjoying their nice warm weather,
next time you are thinking about how cold you are remember
that it is around 20 here, I think it is going to warm up this
weekend though.

Peace out!

Love,

Elder Paxton

Mission Address

For those that want to send letters or packages to Elder Paxton his
mission address is:

Elder Christopher Paxton
Idaho Boise Mission Office
1111 South Cole Road
Boise, Idaho 83709

This is not his physical address but the office will forward it onto his address
as it will change with transfers.

Thanks to everyone for their support of Chris while he is on his mission.

Michelle

I am Alive

I am serving in Caldwell I think, I live in middleton,
I also can't remember what my address is. My companion is
Elder Castillo, he is from mexico. I taught my first lesson last night,
well sat in my first lesson, and said maybe 2 lines, and just tried
to listen and understand. I still don't really feel like a missionary yet
but maybe later today/ I think we are going knock on doors later today
so we'll see how that goes. We live in the basement of one of the ward
members. Also I started driving yesterday, E. Castillo doesn't have a license
so I have to drive, I would rather be on a bike though, presidente says
that I might be on one sometime, I hope so.

I think it is time for us to go now so I will talk to you all later.

love,

Elder Paxton

It's the final countdown!

This is the email from last Friday that I did not get, so it is before he left
the MTC...For those who participated in the hand turkey book, you will
appreciate this post. I didn't know we were in a contest! M

First off, I know that everyone is waiting to hear who the winner of
the turkey contest is.

Drum roll please....

The winner of over all best turkey goes to......Alex Odell!!!

Okay, now a personal note to everyone.

Roark- I enjoyed the reasons why each person got each finger.
Clark- I dig the curl and I am pretty sure that he has superpowers.
Chris- I love how happy your Turkey is.
Alex Odell- congratulations on your victory.
Burgess- Bien Hecho. your turkey was in the running for best.
Hannah J- not the normal colors of a turkey but I sure loved it.
The Seven- Oh how I wish I could be a giant squid again.
Kelsea- I love the hats and the hearts on the back.
K-momo- It really should be a Turkey memorial instead of Abe.
Alex Frazier- you are and will always be you, always needing to
be different.
David & Gigi-I wish that I could have helped make and eat
the deliciousness.
Chris McCook- The first thing that I thought when I saw yours
was before I read the name was,"Has Chris's hand-writing
gotten worse?"
The McCooks- I totally dig the spikey hair.
Jeanette- Who says that Ninjas and Pirates cant be friends.
Lola and Taboosh-Lola lose weight, taboosh keep being awesome.
Joyful- I hope hope you enjoyed the lounging in the chair.
Charlie- I wish that I could have had as good of food as you did.
Renee- I will need to buy some more gatorade when I get to Boise.
Gus-Nice job on the Turkey!!
Bowen- Did you get help with your turkey because I thought that
I was looking at a picture.
Ilah- I will sure try to visit you sometime at your house.
Lori- Elder se dice, Elder
Puppies- I miss you so much and I still need a picture.
Colie- It's not that cold stop whining haha.
Trevor- Smart turkey, way to wear your helmet.
Dad- I like that you put the cars in order of the constructor
championship standings.
Mom- where did you get those hideous feathers?

I am thankful for all of you and I am also thankful that I get to hear Two
amazing devotionals from Elder Oaks and Elder Holland.

I am out of time and need to get food before they close so talk
to you when i'm in Boise!!!!

Con Amor,
Elder Paxton

Leaving the MTC - Arriving in Boise

Today's post is not a letter from Chris, but an update from his mom. I did not receive the email that he said he sent last Friday, so hopefully I will get it the next time he can sign into email.

Today was an awesome day! Chris left the MTC at 6:00 am and headed to the Salt Lake City airport. While he was waiting for his flight he called and talked to his me and Frank! That was awesome. He sounded great and was so excited to get to Boise. He traveled with 13 missionaries going to Boise. He was the only Spanish speaking missionary in his group.

The mission president met them at the airport and then took them all to his home. A luncheon had been prepared for them and Grandma DeMond surprised him with German Chocolate Cake for his birthday. Grandma said he looked great and was excited to be there. After lunch they loaded them in a van and headed to the mission office for interviews and some training. The president said that some of them would be going on appointments tonight. No rest for the weary!

After he had left the mission president's home, the president told Grandma that he was going to be in the Caldwell/Middleton area for his first assignment. For those not familiar with Idaho, Caldwell is west of Boise closer to the Oregon border. We will have to wait to hear from Chris to hear more about his area and new companion.

I also went and met Elder Tate(one of Chris's companions at the MTC) at the airport in Phoenix. He is going to be serving in the Arizona Tempe Mission. Since I was already at the airport at work I went to the gate and was the first to welcome him to Arizona. He was very surprised to see me. Maybe we will have some of those missionaries over for dinner. It was fun to see the group of missionaries coming to Arizona knowing that Chris was doing the same thing at the Boise airport.

I am not sure when his p-day will be, so I am not sure when we will hear from him.

One happy missionary mom,

Michelle