Life is Good

I'm still here. Life is good. Elder Metz is gone. Elder Hansen is here.

When Elder Metz got to the mission field the first lesson he taught was with Johnny Metz. Pretty cool huh? There aren't very many Metz in the world. And then last Sunday Elder Metz taught his last lesson. We met with John Metz. Johnny's dad. Kinda poetic huh? Full circle.

Anyway.

I got a phone call the other day from Sister Cockerham in the mission office. It is termed as the "trunky call". That means I've been on a mission for a long time... She asked me if my DL and my temple recommend were up to date and asked what airport I wanted to fly into (I said STG). I remember making fun of Elders who got their trunky call because they were going home and now that's me!!! Gross. I'm going to throw up.

What else happened this week? Transfer weeks is always a weird week when you get a new companion or a new area. There are always a few days of getting used to everything. Elder Hansen and I are now past the point of getting used to each other so all is well. He is such a good missionary. He's only been out 9 months. It's so fun to be with someone who hasn't been out very long. It's been a while since I've served with someone this young. Tons of fun.

We had lots of meetings this week. Transfer meeting. Trainer/trainee meeting. DL orientation for Elder Call. DLC for all the DL's. Worldwide leadership training. Church, stake correlation. Lots of meetings. Our numbers suffered. We did have some great lessons though! Lot's of good things in the near future. Hopefully Austin and Maddy will be ready to be baptized on July 5th! They went camping this week... So we missed them. We'll see what we can do.

Now that all our meetings are done we got 4 new investigators yesterday. The one with the most promise is Claudia Leon. She's pretty cool. She accepted a soft baptismal invite. Her sister is a member in Pasco. I know her sister's ex-husband Craig Crook. She has a lot of member contacts and it appears that she has been quite prepared to hear the gospel. SUPER EXCITED. We're going over later this week with some members. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Worldwide leadership broadcast was amazing. I loved the way they put it all together with the videos and the talks and the apostles and the prophet. Cool cool stuff. You probably know as much as me about internet time and churches being opened. I'm sure we'll find out more this week when President Ware gets here.

President Greer leaves on Thursday... Sad news. I'm going to miss him. He's the greatest. I've learned a whole lot from him.

Gotta go. Sorry about the emotionless email that this was. hahahaha.

Love,

Elder Paxman

K-Zone

Family. I'm loving it here in the Kennewick Zone. K-Zone. Get it?

Elder Metz goes home tomorrow. My new companion will be Elder Hansen. I'll be training him as a new zone leader. He's been out for 10 months. That's not very long at all for being a new zone leader. He'll definitely be good. I'm super excited to be with him. He will probably be my last companion. 16 total companions. That's a lot. More than usual. We only have 17 transfers as missionaries and I had 16 companions haha.

Story time!

Matt Lindberg got baptized in Hermsiton! He's the guy that got up and bore his testimony before he was even baptized. He talked about being a mormon before he officially was. He also wanted to do baptisms for the dead with the YSA branch before he was baptized for himself. He's a cool cat.

McKenzee Hendrickson got baptized too! That's good news. She's 11 years old and lives in Hermiston with her less-active parents. Her grandpa is a former Stake President and Temple President so she goes to church with him every Sunday. Hopefully she can stay active. It was good to hear news that a couple people I taught in Hermiston got baptized.

Next story:

We found 9 new investigators this week! Like I've said before, Elder Metz is the 4th missionary I have killed and this was another example of how cool a missionaries last week can be. When I was with Elder Butler for his last week we found 12 new investigators and had 102 OYM's. there were two families in those 12 investigators.

This week with Elder Metz we found two families and a few other people to teach. We also taught 21 lessons for the first time this transfer. It's amazing how quickly this area turned around. We taught 5 lessons the first week I was here. The area has really turned around. It's amazing what can happen with some hard work.

 

We also put 2 people on date for the day after my birthday. Elder Metz might come back for the baptism and to visit the mission. It's on July 6th for those of you who don't know when I was born. Austin and Maddy Stickely are the two that we put on date. They come to church every week and love the gospel and want to be baptized. They are 12 and 13 years old and their dad recently got baptized himself so it was just a matter of time for them to follow suit. They're cool kids.

One of the families we found is the Arroyo family.

 

One day we were just getting out of our truck and there were a few kids walking away from us. Elder Metz is number one at talking to everyone so we called out to them and they didn't hear us so we ran up to them and got their attention. Their names were Marisol (18) and Jesse (12). Marisol tried to blow us off and keep walking away but we persisted and eventually got their address and they said we could come back. We finally made it in their door a few days ago and taught Jackie (mom) and Hector (dad) and Jesse. We were only there for about 15-20 minutes but shared our unique message to the world with them. They want to get back to church and hopefully we can help them with that. It was a testimony builder to me of talking to everyone. We wouldn't have found them if we didn't flag the kids down on the street.

Next Story:

Elder Metz is my idol. I want to be exactly like him. We were lying in bed the other night talking and he asked me "when you started your mission what did you want to get out of it?" I thought about it and gave him some response about spreading the gospel or something like that but I really couldn't give him a good answer. I thought about it more and honestly a lot of the reasons I wanted to serve a mission were selfish. A lot of it was for me. I would get a testimony. I would learn how to work. I would learn how to study. I would meet a lot of good people and make new friends. But now I can say that the reasons for serving a mission have changed for me as I have served. Now it's all about other people. A mission has taught me the outline for sharing the gospel for the rest of my life. Not just for two years. The best way for me to feel the Spirit is in someone else's home and recognizing that they are feeling the Spirit too. It's nice to feel it on your own in a personal experience. But when you are teaching someone else and you feel the Spirit with them, that's powerful. That's what it's all about. It's great to have a companion that can ask questions like that to get you thinking in the right direction.

I love serving a mission. It's the best out here. Talking to everyone is the greatest thing. I'm excited to serve with Elder Hansen!

Love you all.

Elder Paxman

I Love it Here

Hey hey hey family!

 

I'm going slow today so this might be a short one.

Life is so good here right now. It's finally warm! It's been in the high 80's and low 90's this week. I love it! People are outside now! Especially in the evenings. It gives us the chance to talk to a bunch of people. Elder Metz is really good at that too. Of course we talk to everyone but Elder Metz is great at striking up conversation and getting to know people. I wish I could serve with him longer. There's so much I can learn from him!

 

He is sad to go home. It makes me want to be more sad to go home! You know what I mean? He and many other missionaries are worried about having less of the Spirit after being a missionary but we had a good experience that probably helped him and definitely helped me. Elder Gudjenov was back visiting tri-cities this weekend to be at the sealing of a family he taught when he served her about 1 1/2 years ago (its crazy how long it's been). He was AP when I came into the mission, Elder Metz and I both really looked up to him. We happened to run into him at the church at the reception after the sealing and he gave us some really good advice. He told us how it can be weird to go home because while you're on a mission all of your prayers and studies and efforts are all based on helping others and building their testimony. But when you go home you no longer have that responsibility. Some RM's feel selfish praying for themselves but Elder Gudjenov's advice was that we shouldn't feel guilty. That's what the Lord wants for you when you go home. He said that his prayers and scripture study have been even better since he went home which is definitely something I needed to hear. It's an irrational fear but a lot of missionaries are afraid of losing the Spirit when they go home. So it was good to hear the testimony of Elder Gudjenov to let Elder Metz and I know that it will be good to go home.

I forgot to let you know! Last week I ran into Dillon Manwaring! I went into sacrament meeting and sat down and then I saw Dillon walk in and had to double take! It was the weirdest thing. He definitely was thrown off too. But after church I went up to him and we talked. He's marrying a girl who lives here in Tri-cities and he was in town over the weekend to visit her family. He's been home from his mission for 6 years now! That was the last time I saw him! 6 years ago at his homecoming talk. Wow. Crazy! He seems to be doing well. Still doing lots of skim boarding hahaha.

We have a zone focus to get 85 new investigators before the end of the transfer. The transfer ends on Father's Day so we're calling it OCHO CINCO FOR DAD!!!!! We're at 63 new investigators already so we're killing it! Life is good! I hope we can keep everyone motivated in the zone. There are so many missionaries here...

Also. We got a new assistant this week! His name is Elder Bennett. With the upcoming mission split, part of the Spokane mission will be coming into the Kennewick mission. So they called a missionary serving in the Spokane mission to come serve here as AP. That way, when the split happens all the new missionaries will have an AP that they know. So Elder Bennett just got here on Wednesday and has been trying to learn everything haha. Imagine it, it's like he's a brand new missionary because he knows no one but he is the Assistant to the President! He has the deer in the headlights look a lot lately. I feel bad for him but he seems to be learning quick! He's a way cool guy. It's fun to have an extra roommate.

Transfer calls this Saturday so I will find out who my last companion will be... Crazy.

The Stickely kids came to church as usual. Their names are Austin and Madeline. They should be baptized really soon. Their dad got baptized about a year ago and they are with him and their step-mom on the weekends. They live with their mom in Sunnyside during the week. We've worked it out and if their mom is okay with them getting baptized then it should happen within the next few weeks. Super excited!!!

I also found out that Mike Munoz in Hermiston will be getting baptized soon. Do you remember him??? I sent a story about him a few emails back... He's way cool and I'm way excited for him. So happy to hear that he's progressing.

I'm sure there's tons more I could say. I love it out here. I love being able to talk to people. The authority that I have to go up and talk to strangers about the gospel is going to be something I miss...

I love you all!

Elder Paxman

Love Serving with Elder Metz

Things have been moving pretty quickly here. It's hard to get it all down because so much is going on and there is so much to learn. Because of that, last weeks email didn't contain all the details that I would have liked it to so I will try to do a better job today of informing you of how things are going.

I think I mentioned we live with the AP's. That's tons of fun. There's only a few places in the mission where multiple sets of missionaries live together and my last two areas have been two of them. It's fun to come home and hear how the other companionship's day went. And they have fun stories because they're AP's. Elder King and Elder Snow are their names. Elder King was my Zone Leader in Pasco so it's tons of fun being able to live with him.

We live in a 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bathroom town home. It's way nice. Missionaries have been living there for around 10 years now but despite that it is still in good condition. There was a tempurpedic mattress left behind so that's what I get to sleep on. The reason the house is so big is because whenever new missionaries come in they stay the night there for their first night. Also, whenever we have MLC, the missionaries from the west side of the mission drive over here and stay the night so we can start the meeting early the next day. There are 7 bunk beds in the three bedrooms. Another perk of living here is that all of our shampoo, conditioner, body wash, toilet paper, paper towels, etc. get paid for by the mission because of the large amounts of people that come in and out. So we get to save a lot of money that way.

The town home we live in is in a larger apartment/town home complex that has a club house and in that club house is a gym and a sauna and a tanning bed and a pool table soooo when we have time we use those. We work out in the gym every morning for our 30 minutes of exercise. And if we have time in the evenings we usually go to the sauna. Super nice! It's way fun. There's also a pool. Everybody has a pool in Tri-cities. (I guess I should say Kennewick and Richland. Not Pasco). But of course we don't use the pool or hot tub :(

Elder Metz and I drive a 12 passenger van. It is known as "megatron" across the mission but Elder Metz and I call it "The Truck". It is the transfer van at transfer time so it gets taken away from us for a day or two to transport people across the mission. Because it's the transfer van we get unlimited miles. It is so nice not to have to worry about going over our mileage allotment!

There are 28 missionaries in the Zone. The biggest zone in the mission. I think I have everyone and their area's down now. To be honest everyone is kinda struggling right now. Nobody got good numbers the past two weeks. We don't know what's going on. Nobody is teaching. It's kinda concerning but we will have a zone meeting this week and we hope that that will help.

As for our area. Things are picking up. We found a few new people to teach this week. Austin and Madeline Stickely are the main ones. Their dad just returned to activity and their step-mom just got baptized. Their mom lives in Sunnyside which is about 30 minutes away from tri-cities. They are with their dad every weekend and will be with him for the whole summer. They have been attending church a lot recently. We were able to invite them to a child of record baptism this week. It was great to have them there. We would invite them to be baptized but we want to talk to their dad first and also get ahold of the bishop in Sunnyside to make sure they would have support there during the week. Bishop Hoke here is trying to get in contact with Bishop Linde in Sunnyside. It's looking promising.

We also have Carol Eddy on date. She is doing okay. She just needs to stop worrying about dying and understand that God isn't the one that makes bad things happen. She kinda has a closed mind. We need to get her to church.

We have a few other people in our teaching pool. It's growing. I feel a lot more comfortable about our area this week than I did last week. We taught 16 lessons which isn't bad at all. Things are going in the right direction.

OH! Another thing we do sometimes is we will drive up to Badger Mountain (it's more like a hill) twice a week and we will run up it for our morning exercise. It is killer! I almost threw up the first time we did it.

Oh man. I would love to write more but I'm probably boring you. I love serving with Elder Metz. He is a great companion.

Nothing else to report

Love,

Elder Paxman