Email and pictures on the same day!

Dear Family,

This week we had some pretty good success. Unfortunately, we are going to have to move back our baptismal date for this weekend but he is still very excited to be baptized. We are going to continue to work with him and his father to help them get ready for their baptism, that should happen the weekend after General Conference.

We are having a lot of fun and are trying to work our hardest. Yesterday we didn't really have very much going on so we went tracting and street contacting for over 3 hours in non-stop rain. We really had a good time, even though the circumstances weren't ideal. Then we had two lessons after our dinner appointment, both of which went very well.

Not much exciting happened this week. Just good old fashion missionary work. I am very grateful to be serving in this area and I hope that we will start to see some families get baptized. But if not I am still happy to be able to serve here. Sorry this letter is so short, there just isn't a whole lot to report on. Just know that I am happy and that life is good.

Love,

Elder Paxton

Elder Paxton sent some pictures home today too. Here are some of them...

Home Sweet Home...

My closet (should I wear a white shirt or a white shirt?)

Ahhh so many Choices! (a missionary can never have too many ties!)

The Scenery

Yes, that is a forklift driving down the middle of the road!

Really? An antler hanging from the light?

My bike after a muddy morning ride

Some of our investigators

My 2 sons Elder Munoz and Elder Cottam

Maybe I worked my son a little too hard...
Which way should we go Elder?

The Twin Falls Temple

"CPS" took my son!

Hello Mother, Hello Father,

So I was told that Elder Muñoz was going to be with Elder Cottam and I for at least 6 weeks, but yesterday President called us and told us that today he has an appointment with the Consulate and that he is leaving tomorrow. So yesterday CPS (the AP's) came and stole my son from me. It was pretty sad to leave especially since we had a lot of fun things planned for today and for the rest of the transfer, but the Lord needs him in Villa Hermosa, Mexico.

I heard of the "new" aquarium in Arizona mills, my zoo friends told me about it I think some of them still work there. You didn't happen to see if I knew any of them did you? I do miss the zoo a lot and wish that I could go play with the stingrays again.

We are planning on having a couple of baptisms at the end of this month and the start of next month. We were supposed to have one this past Saturday, but his "wife" needs to get divorced and then they can get married and then baptized. This Saturday we have a baptismal date and it will probably have to be pushed back because I think she had her baby two and a half months early. One of our other baptismal dates will need to be pushed back because he hasn't gotten over smoking yet, but we know that he will get over it soon. We have another date for the 6th of April and we feel really good about it, as long as he comes to church for the next few weeks.

I didn't get to enjoy another hour of sleep on Sunday because in Spring you go forward and lose an hour of sleep, so I am still adjusting to the dumb (waste of) time change. I wish everyone would be smart like Arizona and not change the time. Especially since in the summer the days are naturally longer and I don't know any farmer that is working consistently until almost nine even during daylight savings. That is really the only criticism about Idaho. I was thinking about boycotting the time change, but that would probably waste a lot of time and we don't want to do that as a missionary.

I enjoyed your extremely mom comment, asking if I had enough clothes and socks and what not. I might want a new white shirt or two for going home but right now there is no sense in getting some because I still have a summer up here and it will probably turn my shirts yellow from sweat anyways, so we will hold off on getting clothes for now.

I hope all is well in Arizona.

Love,

Elder Paxton

Visa Waiter

I just had this picture sent to me today from the mission office. It is a picture of Elder Paxton with his trainee/visa waiter Elder Munoz, along with President and Sis Cannon.

Short email a day late!

Well sorry I couldn't email yesterday. We went to Boise and got to go to the temple, which is a great treat.

While we were down there we saw a poor missionary standing on the side of the road with a sign that said waiting for visa, need training and a companion. So Elder Cottam and I decided to pick him up and give him a place to live (in Ontario) and some training before Mexico. He will be with us for a couple few weeks.

His name is Elder muñoz he is from Liberty Jail, misery I mean Missouri. His papa is from Valparaiso Chile, y su mama es de Guayaquil Ecuador, but he was born in the states. He speaks Spanish real good. He is very excited to be here and serve.

We have to get going because we need to go to the store to do some shopping and then we need to get to work.

Love,

Elder Paxton

Covering a lot of area

Hello Family (de sang re o de espiritu),

This week was a pretty good week. We didn't teach as many lessons but we had a lot of investigators that came to church. We were also able to set two baptismal dates, now we have 4. The best part is we have at least one in every ward or branch that we cover. We are planning on having a baptismal service the last 3 weeks in March.

We have been visiting with Cornelio. His family(Cornelio, su esposa, y sus cuatro ninos(3 ninas (11 anos, 3 anos, 1 anos) y 1(4 anos) nino)) came to church this last week and despite the less then inspirational lesson in Sunday school, which was a training on family history work, none of which was understood by Cornelio and his wife, they really enjoyed going to church and are really progressing well. We set a baptismal date with Cornelio and hopefully his wife and 11 year old daughter will want to get baptized as well. This last week we really did a lot of Spanish work, which is awesome.

We had 3 investigators come to church in all of the units that we cover as well. Overall everything is going well. We are really trying our very best to keep up the good work. Despite some seemingly non productive days. We have really been blessed in many other ways. Yesterday we got to track a whole trailer park of about 40 trailers, and every opened door was a Hispanic family, so we got a lot of good potentials to visit on another occasion. Hopefully good things come from them.

I asked Elder Paxton how the rising gas prices are affecting their missionary work...

The way that the church controls the gas usage is they give us a limited number of miles that we can drive in the month. They pay for gas with a gas card that every car has, and we log our miles everyday. Sometimes we feel like the mileage puts a restriction on the work because we can't drive to all the places we would like, as often as we would like, but it is for a good cause.

It is time to go to Caldwell and play some real indoor soccer which should be fun. Thank you for all of the support and love that I receive!

Love,

Elder Paxton

Another great week!

Dearest Peoples,

This week was absolutely fabulous. Elder awesome...I mean Cottam, and I have been working very hard to improve on all of our key indicators(which are found in chapter 8, page number I'm not sure about), and our results were up and down, in some areas we did better, but in others we didn't do as good, but we know that the lord blesses us for all of our efforts

I very much enjoyed zone conference yesterday. We talked a lot about the restoration of the gospel and about the atonement. I really enjoy zone conferences. They are always very spiritual and up lifting. We listened to a talk that Jeffery R Holland gave in the MTC in 2000. I had heard it in the MTC, I think two times, but it is always great to hear. It is so powerful and moving. He talks a lot about his mission and how we should treasure and make the best of ours. It is often called the don't go home talk, because he basically yells at everyone who is even thinking of going home. That talk is one of the reasons why I am so determined to serve no less then 24 months, not even one day less.

As for the rest of the week, we had a little bit of a miracle. A couple of weeks ago, Elder Cottam and I were in Nyssa and we talked to a man named Cornelia. We were looking for Oscar, and he said that he didn't know him, because he thought that we were the police or something. When we told him that we were missionaries, he told us where Oscar lives and also said that we could come visit him at his house. So we went last week and he told us about a dream that he had. He was praying and some random guy told him that God doesn't listen to him and that he won't ever be saved. Basically that is the general idea of his dream. The day after he had that dream we showed up. So he said that he knows that the dream was false and that God does answer prayers. We are very excited to teach him and hope that all goes well there.

it is time to go talk to you next week.

Love

Elder Paxton

Happy Valentine's Day!

This week was a great week. It had a couple of interesting meetings but it was over all great. Looking at just the numbers(because that is what it is all about) we had 21 lessons(a record for me) and we set two baptismal dates in a ward that hasn't had very much success. Here are the total numbers for the week(look in preach my gospel for what they all mean) 0-0-2-2-9-7-4-1-3-2-5.

We have really been working hard and trying to visit as many people as possible. One thing that helps the work is that we cover a whole bunch of towns. Just this last week we went to in Oregon: Ontario, Vale, Owyhee, Nyssa, and Adrian, and in Idaho: Weiser, Payette, Fruitland, New Plymouth, Parma, and Roswell. We had at least one lesson in almost all of those towns, and the crazy thing is that isn't even half of our area. I am pretty sure that just about all of this half of Oregon is in our area, and some of Idaho. We cover the Ontario, Nyssa, and La Grand stakes, and half of the Weiser stake, so we have a lot of area to cover, but it is great.

So the two baptismal dates that we set are with some extremely eternal investigators. Conrad has seen the missionaries for about 10 years and thanks to all of their work, and a phone call from our ward mission leader, he is going to get baptized on march 26. Our ward mission leader called him on Saturday night to invite him to church and they talked for about an hour and ended up talking about baptism. The ward mission leader Elder Cottam made the promise to him and his son(who also smokes) to read the scriptures and pray every morning and every night and in three weeks they will not have any desire to smoke or drink. They both willingly accepted and are working to get baptized just before conference. It was a very spiritual experience to be able to witness. We are going to visit them tomorrow and we are going to watch the movie, Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. We have a lot of hope for this family and are very excited for them.

Well that is everything that is going on here in the great Ontario Spanish area. This week we are hoping to improve and have even more success. Thanks for all the love and support and have a great week.

Love,

Elder Paxton