Elder Castillo, me and Grandma and Grandpa Paxton
Haven't had a chance to play yet!
My desk
Christmas decorations
Fall at the MTC
The Wasatch mountains before I left the MTC
The MTC world map, Idaho here I come!
One of my teachers the day before I left the MTCI am going to start off by answering all of mom's questions.
I had an interview with President on Monday and he asked
me if anyone had invited us to have Christmas with them,
I told him no and he said if it wouldn't make me too homesick
and if they would pick me up I could call Grandma Paxton
and set something up. I will probably be calling from their
house but I am not sure when it will be. Between 12 and 5
I think, I have no idea. On Christmas we are going to
Grandma's around 12 and we have a dinner appointment
at 5 with a branch member. Other than that I have no idea
what else is going on.
I am doing well and adjusting very well and really
enjoying the work. I am being fed very well. We have dinner
every night and they always give me more food then I want.
We have breakfast and lunch at home and then are out until
9:30-10:00, dinner is always with branch members.
I'm not sure if we do splits often but I enjoyed going to Oregon
because they don't have any sales tax, so I bought a rubiks cube
there and am trying to not waste all of my time practicing that.
I don't know if we get transferred out of our area very often
but E. Castillo has been here for 3 months and has been in a
total of 4 areas in his year of service so far. When it warms up
I hope we will be able to do some outdoor activities but we do
a whole lot of nothing right now on p days. We do not go to the
temple every week only when we are going to Boise for something
or if mileage permits, which it never does since we live so far out
of our area, its a 30 mile drive to and from home.
If you want to know my schedule look in Preach My Gospel
it's in there. This last week has been pretty warm, it has been
above freezing all week, but this weekend it will be down
in the 20's, but there is no predicted snow.
Time is flying so quickly and I cant believe that it is almost
2010, I feel like yesterday was 2005. I also sent my memory
card home today but I don't think that you will get it before
Christmas, quien sabe.
Necesito irme pero quiero que sepan que les amo y me
gusta leer todas las cartas y emails.
que dios les bediga
Elder Paxton
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
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
