Another Great Week

Hello there,

It was a good week. I was anticipating transfer calls all week. They finally came. Everything in our zone changed. The only thing that I expected to happen that did happen was that Elder Lee got transferred and I will be with Elder Camba. There were a bunch of other changes within the zone. Every companionship changed in some way. Two companionships got doubled out. The AP's are now in a quad-panionship with someone who is getting doubled in and training and will have 3 wards. I don't know how much all of this means to you, but things will be a lot different next transfer. It will still be fun of course. And Elder Camba is a very hard worker.

Speaking of Elder Camba. I think I told part of his story last week. He was in Vancouver for 3 transfers and then he got sent home because missionary medical realized that he was on a medicine that you can't be on while you're on a mission. So the plan was to send him home and get him off the meds. He thought it was going to take six months, and if that was the case he didn't think he would want to come back out. And I don't blame him, I don't think I would want to either. But he worked with President Greer and the Mission President in Arizona (He is from Gilbert) and they gave him permission to serve in his home mission while he got on the right meds. So he was home for four weeks then he started serving in the Arizona Tempe Mission for three months and now he is back out here. The transfers in Arizona and Washington don't match up so we had three people in the companionship for a couple weeks. But now Elder Lee is going to Vancouver and Elder Camba and I are staying. If you're wondering what nationality that name is it's Filipino. He is half Filipino and half German. But he's pretty much 100% American. There are some things that he does that remind me a lot of Elder Dutson. Same genre of person I guess.

In the Arizona Tempe Mission they are super super strict. I didn't realize how chill President Greer was until I heard some of the stories that Elder Camba had from Arizona. President Hows in Arizona took away P-day for a couple weeks because they didn't have a high enough percentage of progressing investigators on date. So they needed to either start putting people on date or dropping investigators. They had a list of CD's that they could own and listen to. They weren't allowed to drive on Thursdays even if they had a car. They hardly ever knocked doors because President Hows didn't like that. Basically everything that Elder Camba says about it makes it sound like the No Fun Mission. Maybe it's not that bad but it sounds a lot different than what we have going on in the WKM. A lot more obedient.


Due to the change in missions. Elder Camba had brought a lot of ideas from Arizona. Which is good and bad. It makes me feel like crap because the missionaries are so good there ha ha. But also, it's good because it's an opportunity for me to learn how to be better. Elder Camba had been out 6 weeks less than I have but sometimes I have to remind myself of that. He is a good missionary. I am trying to get along with him as a person too. I just don't fully understand him yet. It's good that we got two weeks to transition. I really enjoyed the tri-panionship.

Moving on. This week we had a lesson with Charles and Mercy. They were a referral from Bishop. They live across the street from him. We were finally able to set something up with him. He has met with missionaries before and he was really impressed with Elder Moses from his past. Charles reads the Bible every day so he is familiar with that and Elder Moses was good at relating all that he said to the Bible. So when we got in there Charles was very nice. He started talking about the Bible vs the Book of Mormon. He sees no problem with the Book of Mormon but he believes that the Bible stands on it's own as God's word and doesn't need anything else. So when we say that we need both of them he has a problem. He asked if he could have a Book of Mormon and we pulled a brand new one out. He then asked me if I had a Bible on me. I pulled mine out and then he asked me to show him a scripture in the Bible and the Book of Mormon that matched up with each other. I was going to flip to 3 Nephi 11 and John 10:16. But before I could do that he stopped me and said that he wanted me to randomly flip somewhere in the BOM and relate it perfectly to the Bible. Uh oh... So I grabbed the Book of Mormon and flipped it open. And guess where it landed? 3 Nephi 11. Exactly. So I related it to John 10:16 and he was very impressed. He read both verses and saw how similar they were and really liked what he saw. It was a miracle ha ha.

Yesterday we had a Recent Convert Fireside in our stake. There were three testimonies by recent converts and then all the missionaries there sang the mission song and then President Greer spoke. When President Greer spoke it was awesome. His message was powerful. He spoke of the Doctrine of Christ and Gifts from God. When describing the Gift of the Holy Ghost vs. the influence of the Holy Ghost he used an analogy that I had never heard before. He said the influence of the Holy Ghost is like walking through a rainy field at night and then lightning strikes and we see our way, but that is followed again by darkness. The Gift of the Holy Ghost is like walking through the field on a bright clear day. We all know these things already but it was great to hear them put that way. I love when President Greer speaks. I would write more but I'm running out of time.

It was a great week. I'm looking forward to serving with Elder Camba in this area. We have another person on date. Hopefully we can baptize a lot this transfer. Thank you all for your support. Love you!

Love,
Elder Paxman

p.s. Pictures of Elder camba and I and Baby Ann's baptism