Coming Home

Last Day on the Mission

Going to the temple with President and Sister Ware before heading to the airport to go home.

Last E-mail

Oh man. It was a great week!

John and Kelly Morgan came to church again this week. We had a great lesson with them on Thursday. We took them on a church tour even though they have been to church many times now. The mission is focusing on the tours and there is a specific outline on how to do them. We took them from the foyer to the chapel to the font room (relief society room). And after showing them the font we set up some chairs and talked with them for awhile. It was a great tour. And the lesson that followed was perfect. As far as the Morgans go I guess. We actually set a baptismal date with them! Septermber 28th! It was so so good to be able to set that with them. It's a huge step for them to even set the goal. And it's almost 2 months away too! But they move really slowly. They can get there. It will give them a reason to find out it's true because their baptism is coming up! John needs motivation to find answers. Kelly needs the ability to recognize the answers that she is receiving. They both have made huge strides individually, as a couple and as a family. Really really excited for them.

We also saw Mike Foster this week. He's so close too he just has to get over anxieties that are holding him back. Mostly because he feels like it will be awkward when he goes to church. He doesn't feel like he knows what to do when he walks in the building. But he is committed to read the whole Book of Mormon and asks questions like "How can my family prepare to go to the temple?" and "Can I serve a mission with my wife?" He really really wants it all it's just hard to be a pioneer. No one in his family is LDS. Poor guy! It would make it so much easier. His wife (member) came to church again this week.

Our area got split. So Elder Hansen will be receiving Elder Hatch (lucky guy) and he will just serve in the Meadow Springs ward (lucky guy) and Elder Tays will serve in the Willowbrook ward with Elder Meyer. Pretty cool.

Well. I guess I'll see you tomorrow. So I'll just stop emailing now.

You probably wanted more feelings and emotion and all that stuff in this email... Sorry. Just ask me tomorrow :)

Love,

Elder Paxman

Looking for Investigators

This week was good. Like usual.

It was really tough as far as teaching people and getting into homes went. We only taught 12 lessons this week. No one seemed to want to let us in and we had tons of meetings.

We did get in with the Morgans though. They have kinda cooled off recently though. They have missed church 2 weeks in a row now. We met with them after church yesterday and they definitely felt bad about missing. Kelly was feeling overwhelmed with Sarah, her baby who wouldn't stop crying. So none of them came. Bummer. Despite slowing down with church they have been speeding up in their reading. They fulfill all the reading assignments we leave them and John even takes notes. He likes to write down what he feels are the main ideas of each chapter and then he usually writes down a few questions. The last question he had was on Alma 40:23 which talks about the resurrection "not a hair of the head shall be lost". He was confused because he didn't have an understanding of what the resurrection was. He thought it was a spiritual thing but we taught about the physical resurrection and it made more sense to him. Just one more thing that was lost in the Apostasy, the docrine of the physical resurrection.

 

Kelly has been looking at more anti material which is disheartening. She tells us she feels depressed after she reads it and we emphasize that those feelings are evidence enough that what she reads isn't of God. But she still allows her doubt to overtake her faith in many cases. Man they are so close. They just need to take a step of faith and commit to a date and things will start falling into place for them.

We need to find more new investigators. The area is probably going to be split next transfer so the missionaries who are here will have even more time on their hands. We need to find new investigators this week so that the split will go well. Elder Hansen needs stuff to do when I'm gone!

MLC was this week. It was a great meeting. I love learning new things. This week has just been a good faith building week all together. It's exciting to see where I can go because I know where I am and where I've been. That probably doesn't make very much sense. Another way of saying what I'm thinking is that God is good at answering questions effectively. And I know that he will keep doing that for me and anyone who really wants to know and puts in the effort. And that's whats exciting for me. I know that I will have more questions and that they will always be answered. Life is exciting.

We had a mini-missionary with us this week. He came in on Wednesday and he wasn't sure if he wanted to serve a mission. By the end of the day he was certain he was going to serve. By the end of Thursday he didn't want to leave. He was talking all day about how he wishes he could stay another day. And we had two bad days with him haha. We hardly got in any doors like I was saying earlier but he loved it! He's a good kid. We told him to write down his experience in a journal so he could remember it if he ever thought about not going again.

OH! We went to a baptism this week. And I looked at the program and saw the name Claire Schend as a speaker. I know her from Yakima and when I was there she was super Less-Active and would hardly show up to a baptism let alone speak at one. But she was there and she gave a great talk on the gift of the Holy Ghost. I went up and talked to her afterwards. She is 30 years old now but is still attending the YSA ward in Yakima. I asked her how she got back to church and she said that she felt like it was church was pulling her back. She felt a great need to go and receive answers to her many questions. I asked her if she had the answers yet and of course she said no :) but she's trying so she will get them one day. God will reward her effort. It was way good to see her there. I will have to tell Elder Lyells that she is active again for the time being (and hopefully for good). He will be so happy to hear that. She made a great recovery. Oh, and the reason she was at the baptism is because it turns out that her niece was the one getting baptized. Yeah yeah yeah.

I'm out of ideas

Last week here I come

Love

Elder Paxman

Kennewick Zone

Last week we got a call from Nanci Warner. She is an older lady in our ward and she needed help. Her dog got hit by a car and she needed to bury it. So we went over in our proselyting clothes  and dug a 3 foot deep hole in her front yard in 100+ degree weather. She loved that dog more than anything else in her life right now. It was sad to have to bury him, but it was also an odd experience. I never thought I would be doing that on my mission.

We made good progress with the Morgans this week too! We had a lesson on Tuesday and afterward played bocce with them and the Wesslings in our ward. The Wesslings are the coolest. It was good fellowship for John and Kelly and their 10 year old son Tyler. They missed church this week though... They had come three weeks in a row before this week. So we went over last night to check in and they're still doing great. She's been reading every day. He's been reading whenever we give him assignments. They've both made big strides in their progress in the gospel.

I ran into two former companions this week! We were at the church and we saw Elder Boswell in the parking lot. He's here visiting the mission. And then Saturday and Sunday we got to see Elder Metz who is doing the same things as Boswell. They're just coming back to visit before school starts. Elder Metz came to dinner last night with us too over at the Rose's house. It was pretty awesome to see both of them again and weird to see them not as missionaries.

We found a new investigator named Debra Halley-Hanson. She is super cool. She's met with missionaries in Pasco before and has attended church with a friend before. We "accidentally" found her when looking for someone else. SHe's coming on a church tour on Tuesday and then she's going to cook us dinner on Wednesday. Things are going well!

Speaking of church tours. We had zone conference this week and that was a big focus of it. In the Spokane Mission (which we just picked up a lot of) they were really big into church tours, and we have just adopted a lot of their ideas and tactics in our mission now. So there is a greater focus on getting non-members to the church to give them a quick tour of the building to help relieve any anxiety about coming to sacrament meeting. We're trying to get everyone through a tour! Including the active members to show them what we do when we take investigators on a tour. It was a great training, and my last zone conference. I learned a lot. President Ware and the Assistants trained us well.

A lot of other good things happened this week but I don't want to bore you with more details :). Just know that we're doing a lot of eating. Way too much eating. Take it easy on your missionaries, don't feed them so much that they pop. Even if they're skinny. No sense in making them fat like me haha.

This upcoming week will be one that is full of meetings. District Meeting, DoChrist training, MLC, then zone meeting next Tuesday It will be a good week.

Love you all.

Elder Paxman

Jackie Chan

Yolo,

Elder Paxman speaking.

This week was a pretty normal week I guess... We received Elder Tays on Tuesday. It's super fun to have him with us. I remember when he first started his mission in Sunnyside (Yakima Stake). He was struggling because everything was all so new to him. He has only been a member for 2 years now and it still shows sometimes but in other things it seems like he's been a member his whole life. This is the first time I've had a companion who is a convert and it's been super useful. He can really connect with people on a fundamental level. Hopefully Elder Hansen and I just fill in the blanks. It's been a fun week and I'm excited to keep it going with Elder Tays from Richmond Virginia.

 

Another thing that's fun is that my past three companions have all been from somewhere other than Utah and people love it! Members are always disappointed when you say you're from Utah, unless your companion isn't from Utah, then it's okay. And now I have two companions from California and Virginia! People love it. It's fun :). And Elder Tays has a little drawl too so that makes it even better. 

It was go go go all week. We had three district meetings to be at instead of two this week because of transfers. Transfers was on a Tuesday which made it impossible for some people to hold district meeting but others could, so we had D.M. on Tues Wed and Thurs... Lots of meetings.

 

On Saturday we actually got out at 10. It was the first time we were able to do that in awhile. Usually our mornings are filled up with meetings or planning time. This upcoming week will be no exception. We have stake correlation on Wednesday night. I love those meetings. It's so great to learn from all the men of the church in this area.

Cool story. We have been going through a potential investigators sheet lately to find new investigators. One of the names on the list was Jackie and it said that he was an 18 y/o male that still lived at home. We stopped by a few times and we caught his mom at home but that's all. His mom is Asian and we thought it was funny because this kid's name is Jackie. So we joked around all week calling him Jackie Chan. We stopped by again last night and caught him at home. We talked a little on his doorstep and then I asked him if people called him Jackie Chan in high school because his name is Jackie and he's Asian. he said "yeah, it started in the 3rd grade" I said "wow that started pretty early, no mercy from your friends" Then he said "yeah, the teachers would go down the roll and they would stop at my name and ask if it was a practical joke or something" Then I stopped and said "wait, what's your last name?" and He said "Chan". So his name really is Jackie Chan hahaha. So funny. He loves it too.

 

Another crazy thing about Jackie is that he is planning on majoring in business at central washington university and wants to go into fashion design. He is going to open up a clothing store in Richland with one of his buddies. And he has a huge collection of shoes. He loves shoes. At one point he had 200 pairs but he sold 150 pairs of shoes to a company in California for $30,000 to make a down payment on a Lexus. It's a nice Lexus. And he's 18 years old! He brought us upstairs to show us what's left of his collection. He has some really really nice shoes. My favorite pair were probably the Space Jams. They are the same kind of shoe that Michael Jordan wore in the movie Space Jam. He said they were worth $600 brand new. He goes to shoe conventions in Seattle every year to buy sell and trade shoes. Crazy stuff. It was pretty cool. He's my new best friend.

We also saw the Morgans this week. They came to church too! They are very open with us and have told us before that they think church is boring and that they are lazy and don't want to go. But they have been coming nonetheless and are seeming to enjoy themselves more and more each week. They have tons of friends in the church already so that's not a problem. We actually run into the problem of having too many fellowshippers haha. We don't know who to take with us on any given week and we don't want to hurt feelings of their fellowshippers by saying we don't need them. Everything is flowing really well. We are getting there with them. They just need to fully commit to it and get baptized. I think the biggest things is that they need to read the Book of Mormon more consistently. They read it but prefer to read other things like the ensign and other church books that have been given to them. We're trying to focus on the Book of Mormon though because they still aren't certain that it's true. Kelly Morgan has had a lot of problems with Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon in the past but hasn't put in the work to get past that yet. She has been coming to church which I'm sure helps, but there's more that she, and we, can do to help build a testimony of the Book of Mormon.

We went through a cleansing of our teaching pool again this week. We dropped a lot of people that weren't going anywhere. We really only have like 10 really good investigators who have real intent. The rest are on our radar but haven't shown much interest past letting us in the first time. Hopefully we will have a lot of time this week to refresh our pool with new investigators.

I've probably said it before but I saw it even more this week. One of my favorite things about missionary work is that it you're having a bad day you know exactly how to turn it around. You just go outside and talk to people! Talking to everyone is the perfect antidote to any missionaries' problems. It was 8:00 last night and we had taught a few lessons but hadn't recorded any OYM's yet and we were all feeling a little sluggish and down so we decided to park and find people to talk to. The first one we talked to was convinced that Joseph Smith was a drunk and a drug addict. So we dismissed him quickly. But even with that experience I felt so much better and excited to do the work again! It's amazing that even (perhaps especially) in the presence of rejection and opposition we still feel the joy of being a successful missionary. You just have to get out and talk to people! So that's what we did for the next 20 minutes and then to finish our night we stopped by Jackie Chan's house and that's when we met him for the first time. The Lord blesses us when we put forth an effort. We will always receive supernatural aid when we exert ourselves.

Well, I think that's all. This was a pretty dang good email compared to last week. So enjoy it :)

Love,

Elder Paxman

K-Zone

Crazy week.

I failed to mention that we got a new missionary on Monday. Elder Cramer came into the MTC a few weeks late. There were changez in transfer dates and apparently he missed the memo and showed up late. So he came in mid-transfer and he has been with Elder Hansen and I. BUT! We just had a mid-transfer transfer and he is being ripped from our loving arms to go up to Oroville Washington. I's sad. I thought he was going to help Elder Hansen kill me... I'm going to miss him. A mission is full of saying goodbye to people you come to love in a short amount of time.

We are receiving Elder Tays though as a replacement for Elder Cramer. He is coming from Pasco. I love Elder Tays! He is pretty awesome. He's been out about 8 months. He's a convert and is 24 years old. His girlfriend is a member and that's how he was introduced to the church. He got baptized and they were going to get married I think but then he got his patriarchal blessing and it said he would serve a mission so that is what he did. And now he's here with us in Kennewick. I'm super excited to serve with him.

This will make 18 companions. That is a ton of companions... I must be a trouble missionary. This will be the 5th tri-panionship I've been in.

Another crazy thing that happened this week is that we got kicked out of our house. It's in the midst of getting painted and carpets cleansed. We had to move everything out of it... 4 recliners a couch 4 tables 7 bunk beds. It was a lot of stuff that is now sitting in our garage. We were going to be sent to live with other missionaries in our zone that live way on the other side of town but we asked if we could live in the mission home with President and Sister Ware for the week and they said yes! So that is where we have been for the past few days and we'll be there all week. It's way fun. I never thought that I would be staying at the mission home... It's super cool to be around President so often. They cooked us dinner yesterday. Fun fun fun fun fun.

Part of training a new missionary includes letting the new missionary invite someone to be baptized in their first week. So we were looking for someone that Elder Cramer could invite. It wasn't too hard, we had an appointment with Claudia and Aiden Leon. He invited them and resolved their concern and badabing, they're on date for August 17th (my two year mark). YAY!

Kelly Morgan came to church all on her own this week! We invited her on Tuesday but weren't able to get a hold of her to follow up on that invite. But she showed up and it was a really awesome meeting.

I got to talk in church this Sunday, then I taught the mia maids/beehive class. then we all taught gospel principles. Lots of teaching yesterday.

Good things are happening. We really hope to see some baptisms soon. Especially for the Morgan family. They're so close!

I don't know what else to say. Kind of a lame email...

Elder Paxman

 

 

4th of July and 21st Birthday!

Not much time to write anything today.

It was a great week!

The 4th:

We had to be in by 7 because people get crazy in tri-cities! Not really... It's not that bad at all. But they wanted us in early. But President Ware called the Assistants and asked for them to come to his home instead that evening and invited us to come with. We put up some pictures and helped unpack some things. When we were finished we played bocce in their backyard! Sister Ware surprised us all and lead their team to victory. We had some brownies and ice cream and talked a lot. It has been really great to get to know the Wares. They sent us off around 9 and we went home. When we got home it was dark and fireworks were starting. So the only logical thing to do in an apartment complex with a blocked view is to climb on our roof. So that's what we did :). It was soooo cool. You could see at least 20 firework shows going on all around tri-cities. They were all pretty distant but it was cool to have a panoramic view of all the fireworks in the city and on the river. There's a big barge that goes out on the Columbia River and shoots off fireworks from out there. So cool. It was a good 4th of July.

The next morning I opened my birthday mail! That was very nice to hear from you. Thank you for your birthday wishes. The Cockerhams called us in the morning and offered to take us out to lunch for my birthday so we went to PF Changs for lunch. We worked a little bit and then were at the church by 4 to prepare for the baptism at 6. Elder Hansen bought me McDonalds (at my request) for dinner. He said he would take me anywhere and I chose McDonalds. Just like last year when I did the same with Elder Camba hahaha. So good.

The baptism was great! Maddy went first. Her dad, Brian, baptized her. He is a convert of only 1 year so he hasn't seen many baptisms and had a rough time getting it right haha. He said the prayer wrong 5 times before he tried to baptize her and then it took 3 tries to actually get her all the way under hahahaha. So bad. But so good. Austin went second and his was perfect. 1st try. Brian just needed some practice.

Afterward there was refreshments. I walked into the relief society room and everyone started singing happy birthday. There was a cake that said "Happy 21st birthday!" Elder Hansen coordinated it all. He talked to Sister Hunter who brought the cake. Very cool surprise.

Other than the baptism Friday was a tough day to catch people at home. The day after the Fourth of July is a tough day to proselyte haha.

There's been a lot of fires here recently. We got a call from an Elder in our Zone, Elder Babers, and he told us that the front of his car had melted haha. There was a fire in the canyon right by their house and it was right next to their car. They were walking in their area and saw the flames and realized that it was close to their house so they ran over and saw that it was about to get their car. He ran across a busy street and almost got hit by a car and jumped in on the passenger side and drove the car off before it caught on fire but the whole front end had started to melt especially their front headlight. Crazy stuff. Someone caught it on video and sent it into the news. They interviewed Elder Babers and he was on the news a few nights ago haha. They say the fire got started by a firework... Silly kids. Setting of fireworks in a canyon.

Like I said earlier. It's been great to get to know the Wares better. Like any new mission president they are way different from the Greers. Night and day. We have spent a bunch of time with them in the past week. It's kinda crazy how much we have seen them. It's great to see them learn and have enthusiasm to work. Great people. I love them a lot.

No more time. Hope you liked the pictures. Sorry I didn't send more. Mason does way better than me as far as pictures go haha.

Love you all!

Elder Paxman

The most interesting man in the world--They keep this cutout in their apartment. Not quite sure why.

Baptism of Austin and Maddy

Mike Munoz's Baptism

Oh De Lollie Lollie

This week was whatever. Just kidding. IT WAS AWESOME! As usual.

Things have really chilled out since transfers. I can finally breathe again. Elder Hansen is picking up on things really fast too so he's helping out a lot. I really enjoy being with him. And the first few days after transfers are over so we're past the awkward stage that you go through with any companions getting to know each other. It's good to be with him.

Because we didn't have so much administrative stuff to do this week we got to proselyte more!

The Stickelys are a go for their baptism. It's going to be on my birthday! 2 baptisms on my birthday! And I was just emailing "elder" Sam Metz and he said he's going to come up for the baptism this Friday! So cool Way exciting. It will be so good to see him again. And I didn't even have to wait that long!

President Greer is home now... and President Ware is here. They are soooo different from each other. It's so fun to be around President Ware and get to know him. Elder Hansen and I got to go down to Hermiston on Saturday for a baptism and President and Sister Ware drove us. We got to talk with them and get to know them a little bit. It was fun.

I knew they were getting in on Thursday around noon and that they were going to the mission home. I wanted to see them so I told Elder Hansen we would do some finding around the mission home haha. We stopped by some potential investigators and then the Greers rolled up with the Wares in the back seat haha. So Elder Hansen and I were the first missionaries to meet them! Yes! We even met them before the AP's. Elder Hansen says I was being sneaky because I didn't tell him why we were finding around the mission home hahahaha. Funny. But it worked. But one of the first things Sister Ware told me is that her maiden name is Paxman. Kinda crazy huh? We haven't been able to identify anyone that we both know or are related to. Probably because I don't know any paxmans other than those in Canada.

The baptism we went to in Hermiston was for Mike Munoz. It was so good to see him. He's come a long way in his progression. The first thing he said to me when we got there was "I go to church now!" hahaha. He went from a non-church goer to a church goer. Good to see. His wife looked way happy too. A lot of his non-member family came to the baptism.

We found 6 new investigators this week. That was really good.

The third hour meeting in Willowbrook was good. It was all on missionary work. We all split up into groups and role-played inviting scenarios. It was really good for the members to practice and discuss different ways to invite their friends and family to participate in church activities and learn more about the gospel. Bishop Mitchell has done an amazing job of getting the ward excited to do missionary work.

Love you all.

Gotta go.

Elder Paxman

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

Loving Kennewick

So. I am absolutely loving it right now here in Kennewick. I am serving with one of my favorite companions. Elder Metz is the best. And Kennewick is amazing. The only sad thing is that this transfer is a short transfer because of the new mission president coming in. So I will only get to be with Elder Metz for 3 more weeks. Sad. But that's pretty much the only thing getting me down right now. The only sad part about this is that it has to end.

Here's what happened this week.

There were two baptisms in Hermiston on Saturday. I got to go back and see one of them. It was for Chuck Hall. We were teaching Chuck a few weeks ago and asking him if he believed the Book of Mormon to be true. He was already solid for his baptism so we weren't worried but his answer was a little bit surprising. He said that he has known the Book of Mormon was true for years. He has known that the Prophet Joseph Smith was a prophet for years. He has believed that for awhile. Elder Hutchens and I were just blessed to walk into that. We were there at the right time in the right place and Sister Pearson (his fiancee) wasn't afraid to make the invitation. It was the epitome of Alma 13:24. Angels declared it to Chuck before we showed up. We just need to follow the Spirit so we know who's being prepared like that. And we cant be afraid to invite! Otherwise we miss out on helping many of Heavenly Father's children.

Just think of it. Who knows how many people are out there that believe all these things and all they need is an invitation. How sad would it be if they went through their whole life and never was invited to act on the things they believe. They don't know how to act. That's why we're here. Not just missionaries. Everyone who knows! Cool story. We gotta find the prepared people.

As for the work in our area... It's relatively nonexistent. There wasn't a lot going on here at all. They had a total of 4 investigators left for us in the area book and none of them were good. It's a good thing Elder Metz has served in this area before. We are going back to a lot of the people he used to teach. It's so cool to see the people that remember him. They're all so excited to see him. I sure hope it would be the same in any of the areas I've served in.

Because of the lack of things to do here right now we have been doing a lot of finding. Mostly finding people that Metz used to teach. So we got a few new investigators in the few days I've been here. It's also been tiring to try and get the Zone going. It's tough to step into this position and know what to do. We've kinda switched up the Zone vision a little bit. We have four districts and 3 new district leaders. Elder Dutson is our fourth district leader and he helped out a lot on letting us know what was going on last transfer. We've switched things up a lot and trained our new DL's and had a DLC and a few other meetings. There are 28 missionaries in our zone which is the biggest out of any in the mission. It just takes a little bit to catch up on everything. We're getting there though. It will be good to see all the missionaries together today for p-day. We also had a cereal party on saturday to get together and meet everyone.

What else... Ha. We put someone on date I guess... Her name is Carol Eddy. She is definitely not solid. June 22 was her date. We had to invite her 5 times before she would give us a straight answer. And even then it wasn't very straight haha. We'll see if she comes to church!

I'm sure lots of this email didn't make sense and lots was repeated. I've just been trying to collect my thoughts and organize everything here. The main thing: We are trying to find new investigators. All throughout the zone. We are shooting for 85 in these next 3 weeks. Ocho Cinco. That's what we're calling it. It's gonna be big.

I love this Kennewick Zone.

Love love

Elder Paxman

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