September 23, 2014

Dear Family,

Phew this last week was hard....  Everyone in the district was saying it was the worst week they've had so far.  Really glad it's the temple today for everyone to kinda calm back down.  Lots of fights and mean words between districts (there are 2 districts in the ward and the districts are mad at each other but we got things figured out hopefully.)  I loved the temple though!  It was kinda weird going back again.  Haven't gone in so long that it was just weird!  I can't even imagine how people feel like when they haven't gone for years.  It was super awesome though.  Being in the temple with you guys was my favorite things before I left too...  Made me kinda sad today, but hey it's all good.  This mission is passing by way too fast for me already.  Dallin said we're 1/8 of the way done already...  Crazy.  

Since this last week wasn't so good we didn't really get too much teaching done.  We didn't find anyone and our week was full of emergency exchanges to help other Elders out and lots of drama and cancelled planning things but we didn't know they were cancelled and stuff...  You don't want to know it all.  It's just a big mess.  I'm way glad we can start over this week.  

It has finally cooled down to like 80's which feels like heaven.  I'm lovin it!  Making me excited for Halloween and stuff!  

I got the recipie for Flan the other day or whatever you call it.  I need to try it sometime.   The person I got it from is a recent convert and she had some.  I tried it and it was pretty good!  I can send it to you guys sometime if you want.  There is an elder  from Micronesia here who is waiting for his visa to go to Australia who makes Micronesian pancakes.  I'm going to try to get that recipe from him too. 

Man you guys are turning into farmer people while I'm turning into a city kid!  Making stuff for the farmers market?  That's crazy!  Sounds pretty fun actually. :)  Making Rhodes rolls and doing that?  That's so funny! :)  That's totally what half the people here would do!  This lady actually wanted us to go to the food bank the other day and lie about our age and families to get free food or something.  It was...  interesting. :)  

That's so cool about homecoming. :)  It sounded like Rachael had a really good time.

Wow that's so cool that people still kinda remember me!  Next time you see Morty tell him that I'm going to beat all his kids in a race when I get back because this running in the morning is really getting me fit again.  I'm loving it so much. :)  I am actually probably around a 5:00 mile again which is pretty cool.  And then 20 more months of this and I'll be running crazy good! ;)

That's awesome about the Ogden temple thing. :)  Sounds like a really good experience.

Well I only have a bit to talk about right now because I pretty much said everything about this last week...  Don't want to dwell on it.  But Gary and Debbie.  Do you remember when I talked about them?  They have the evil bird that ate my finger.  Anyway they've pretty much adopted me.  So yeah...  Kinda awkward now but I may not be coming home.  Just kidding. :)  Seriously though they call Elder Petersen and I their sons.  They have no kids so they just take care of us now and we go over every week.  We can't teach them because they're english and we can only teach Spanish people.  They're the nicest people on the planet and just all around incredible. They are people that I will for sure go by and visit again after my mission.  But it's just fun talking to them and they tell us stories and buy us dinner every time we go over.  (All you can eat buffet two weeks ago called Wood Grill.  I think I already told you about that.)  They are just incredible.  So I am being taken care of. :)  Everything is going good.  I love seeing the Spirit working through me and with me.  When on the mission it's so much easier to feel and see the spirit work on and in your life and in the lives of those around you.  It's really incredible.  

I miss you guys a lot but I know this is where I need to be right now.  I kinda just have to push away the wanting to go home thing and ignore it and focus on what I have to learn next.  I feel like I am so behind with learning and Spanish and everything.  I am trying so hard though so I know that I will be rewarded.  I can for sure tell that this two year experience will and already has changed me so much.  I didn't think I would change all that much because I always considered myself a good kid but there are just some things that are different and that I can see will change before I finish. 

I sure do love you guys though!  Thanks for all your support with this!  This mission would be so much harder if I didn't have your support and stuff.  Whenever I wish that this mission would go by faster or that I could be done with it I just think on my patriarchal blessing and my mission is such a big part of it.  It's a good 1/4 of it and I can't just let something that is such a big influence on that pass by like it's nothing.  So yeah sorry just feel like saying that.  I have to get it out somehow I guess.  Sorry I feel like I'm just ranting to you.  I'm so excited for General Conference though!  Then the week after that is Zone conference where we will have President Tew come I think!  I'm not entirely sure but we will see.  And then after that is transfers again!  This transfer is a short one only 5 weeks which means the next one will be 7 weeks so that's what's going on with that.  

Also about this morning we had a temple sealer take us (4 in the morning!  Woo!) and he's insane!  He's probably like 90 and he drove faster than that too!  He did this funny thing where we hit a stoplight and he didn't want to wait so he turned right and then did kind of a U turn to turn right and continue on the road we wanted to go on.  I don't know if that makes any sense but it was so funny!  We basically just did this big squiggly line to get around a stop light.  I've always wanted to do something like that. :) Anyway I love you so much!  I miss you!  But it will go by quickly.  Every month goes by a ton faster than the last.  Especially this month...  September it feels like is going by like a dream.  I love this work.  It's so cool to do and to be a representative of Jesus Christ.  Or Jesucristo in Spanish I guess. :)  

Anyway that's all sorry not much to talk about...  Oh yeah I did the cinnamon challenge the other day.  It was weak...  Way over talked.  It dried up my mouth for a bit and then I got spit in my mouth again naturally and swallowed it down.  Easysauce.  Anyway I love you!  Have a good week!  You're the best mom ever!

Diane

September 15, 2014

Dear Family,

Ok man I am so jealous of your weather right now.  It's over 100 degrees every day right now and pretty miserable.  Humidity is not fun!  Enjoy the weather though!  It sounds so great right now!

Good luck with all those sickness stuff going on...  Just eat a pepper and burn it out! ;)

I hope Rachael has lots of fun. :)  Homecoming is the best!  Crazy thinking that not too long ago I was doing that too.  That's going to be so cool.  Have so much fun too with it! 

Woah Jake went to the temple! That's right he's old enough huh?  That's super cool!  Man I can't wait to see how much he's changed. :) That's going to be so cool!  I'll still have to beat him up a bit though in order to keep him normal. 

How close is Sam to being potty trained?  Does he kinda want to do it?  That's super cool that Matthew is using French though. :)  Maybe you guys will learn to speak french too and then I'll be the only one who doesn't know! I'll just speak Spanish to myself in the corner. :)

So with Pablo, we had a super spiritual lesson on Saturday.  I love feeling the promptings of the Spirit in lessons and acting on what it says.  It's so much fun to see where it goes. :)  But I said that we can say a prayer together and if he has enough faith he wouldn't have work or some other opportunity to go to church would come up (he works Sundays) and we did say the prayer (I said it) but he didn't make it to church...  We will go by tonight I think.  We did pick up a new family of investigators last night though which is unheard of!  It was so cool!  So one of them is a runner and I told him I love him.  But yeah it was a really good lesson and we are going back on Wednesday to teach them again so that was the biggest thing this week.  4 new investigators and a family and one is a runner!  It can't get any better. :)  I really hope we can work things out and convert them!  Woo!

I freakin LOVE Jesus the Christ!  Ok you know I was reading it before I left on my mission right?  I really liked it then too but it's kinda hard to get into and it still is but once you start, you can just tell that it's basically one of the coolest books ever written.  You should try it!  It takes a while and it's hard a lot but it's amazing!  Maybe you could go to the Jesus the Christ class too!  That would be pretty cool!  That's super cool about institute though!  That's awesome you can do that!  I didn't know you could!

Well the cinnamon thing didn't go down last week.  I'm going to try for this week though. :)  Funny you say to eat a live bug. :)  I came up with live goldfish but we are first going to find out if we will get sick from it before we try it.  I'm actually pretty nervous about that one...  Not a fan of fish first of all and then having it be alive and whole...  Bleh!

I'm kinda all over with the scriptures.  Not really a specific thing right now but I'll let you know when I find something to study!  It's gotta be worth my time!

I'm not really sure what was the biggest thing is to help prepare for a mission before.  I didn't realize how perfect you have to strive to be on your mission.  It's really hard but you realize how imperfect you are and how hard it is to strive to be as perfect as possible.  It's stressful and I can see that that's the biggest thing out here with stress for me is striving to be worthy to be an actual representative of Jesus Christ.  I was having a hard time the other day with thinking that I'm just not worthy and I was really down but then Sunday came and the day of rest really helped me to feel much better and ready to take on this next week.  But for me that's the biggest struggle is being perfect because it's not really perfectionism that's going on with this but more of like being who I have to be.  It's hard to explain.  Sorry probably not the best answer.  But you can't really prepare perfectly, just be as obedient as possible.

Language is coming.  It's super hard and frustrating at some times and other times it's easy as cake but yeah I'm learning.  My comp is good. 

I love you guys!  I think I said everything I wanted to this week.  Oh we have the temple trip next week!  On Tuesday!  I'll tell you about it then but I don't have P day on Monday because of that.  I'll email sometime Tuesday after the trip which could end anytime...  So yeah just a heads up.  I'm super excited!  Oh shoot!  I forgot to bring my camera stuff...  Sorry!  I don't have any pictures to send anyway though so yeah...  I'll probably forget next week too but I should have some pictures of the temple and stuff.  But I'm so excited for that!  

I love you!  Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Passey

September 8th, 2014

Hey! :)

Yeah the raw egg was super gross.  We both weren't feeling so good for a while after that but isn't it worth it to become a man?!  Come on! :)  That's so cool about the Ogden temple!  I loved it when we went through the Brigham City one so I bet the Ogden one was super fun too. I can't wait till I can go through it.

I'll try to send some pictures next week.  I've never tried but I'll try to figure it out...  I don't really have too much to send though.  Some cool stuff though.

School sounds good! Pretty cool that Matthew is learning so quickly!  Also sorry I felt like I kind of snapped at you next week.  I was kind of stressed because we only had a short amount of time and we were in the family history library because the main place we go to was closed.  So yeah, sorry about that.  I really do like getting stuff from you guys but letters are really nice!  If you could send stamps I could send some back to you guys too!  

Alright, so transfers.  Well I'm staying with Elder Petersen!  Yay!  However Elder Petersen just got called to be district leader and this district has a long history of one and done district leaders and since I'll be done with my training by the end of this next transfer some crazy juju is going to go on there.  So my district leader is leaving and Elder Roberts is leaving.  I'll miss them both a lot!  I hang out with Elder Roberts a lot so it's going to be weird without him!  My area is alright.  It's kind of slow sometimes but there's always enough to do and people to find.  Sometimes it just takes more work than other times.  Elder Petersen is awesome though!  Pretty fun to be with him and doing stuff!  We have a lot of fun. :)  We're going to try the cinnamon challenge this week - probably on Sunday again.  If you can think of fun things we can do like that let me know! Except we're not doing the gallon challenge.  We don't want to throw up.  And milk is super expensive too.  

Pablo is pretty awesome!  We did get a couple appointments with him and we have been kind of teaching hard stuff lately and he seems to be taking it super well.  I said straight up last time that either this church is right or it's not and we have just kind of been starting to push him.  We will see how it goes though!  We have a lesson on Wednesday with a member (his name is Hmo Lozano and is a former Jehovah witness! Pretty much the coolest guy ever.) 

As far as food goes I kind of just eat whatever I feel like.  I don't really make things very often unless I feel like it.  It's too much work a lot of times to figure that stuff out.

Ok so this week update: Spanish is coming pretty good.  I've gotten some compliments from people who ask how long I've been out and when I say 3 months they say they're impressed with how well I can speak for someone who has only been learning for that short time so that feels pretty good.  I try to teach and talk a lot in Spanish.  It's really hard because it's a completely different way of thinking and it's just goofy to get used to but it's coming.  

I also got a new bag from a member and I like it a lot so that's really cool. :)  We ate at this barbeque place on Thursday and it was SO good!  I had ribs for the first time I think and it was awesome.  Really good food there!  That was probably the best thing I ate so far.  

I'm trying out this new thing where every week I work on an attribute of Christ in Preach My Gospel.  So this last week was charity week!  I worked and focused specifically on that and it's hard...  But I can see huge improvements which is really neat to see.  To start it out both Elder Petersen and I gave this homeless guy we pass every day 5 dollars so that was cool!  This next week is virtue week. That'll be interesting.  I think that every week I work on it becomes a billion times harder to do it.  I've heard of
Elders doing it and hitting patience week and having all their investigators drop them and stuff like that so that'll be fun. :)  

Guess what?  Apparently I talk in my sleep!  Like for instance Elder Petersen said this morning that he woke up around two and I was saying a prayer in Spanish!  And there have been a bunch of other times too but I never knew that!  Maybe I just started on my mission...  Weird.

It's raining today!  California people are so funny...  They're freaking out.  On the way over they were going like 30 on the freeway and stuff like that. :)  It's fun to watch but super gross at the same time because the water washes all the crap from the road and all the oil and gas and all of that stuff so that's pretty nasty to see.  The rain is pretty dirty too.  But it's still rain!  Cool stuff!

I cleaned the apartment the other day because the day before Elder Petersen said we need to deep clean.  Which to both of us meant completely different things. :)  To him it meant sweeping.  What I did was I hand mopped (he thought that was crazy.  He kept saying we don't have a mop and I was all like I don't need a mop!) I also cleaned out the bathroom which was pretty scary.  I feel brave that I did that one.  It was kinda fun to do that. But thanks for teaching me all this stuff!

Anyway I love you guys!  Have a good week!  

Elder Passey

September 1st, 2014

Dear Family,

That package really surprised me!  I was super off guard!  It was way fun though. :)  Thanks!  It was really good everything you sent.  Everything is going good though!  This last week wasn't so great but it wasn't bad either.  Just average!  

My ward is pretty small but it has enough people.  Everyone basically is a convert.  Good 40ish people show up regularly.  The area is pretty big.  The other Elders have their own zones in the ward boundaries.  I only use my Spanish hymn book at the dorm.  They have them at the church.  That's super cool you guys are going to the Ogden Temple open house!  

I tried to buy peaches today but they didn't have any good ones...  I did get some Pink Lady apples though!  And I'm getting into this aloe thing.  It's way good but kind of like a health drink thing.  

I made German pancakes this morning!  That was good!  I don't wear glasses anymore.  Not worth it.  I can see well enough to get by.  If you could send it, I could use my ankle brace for my right ankle...  Since we play soccer every day it's still pretty weak and it hurts a lot the day after and during.  So maybe if you could send that?  I can't think of anything else but don't send me packages too often!  I don't want to get one like every week!  I want to be able to look forward to it!

Ok so this week not much really happened.  We had a really good training on Friday and the craziest lesson I've taught that night.  It was with this guy called Pablo and we took him on a church tour.  He has really improved a lot this past couple of weeks but he doesn't go to church because he works on Sundays so that's really hard. We can only meet with him once a week.  Anyway we took him around the church and had a lesson about temples.  Then after a long time of talking and super spiritual stuff I asked him if he would be baptized and he finally brought up his big problem with the church which is interesting.  It was what if another church comes to him and says that they're the real church and stuff.  So we talked to him about that and we'll talk more this week but it was pretty crazy and super fragile.  It's so much fun to see how the Spirit works through you to ask questions that you wouldn't normally say and just to feel the Spirit using you to speak.  But by the end we got an answer and he said he will be baptized!  Super cool!  We didn't set up a date or anything. That was all we need for now.  We can work on that but he's at the point now where he has to decide if this is the true church or not so when we meet with him hopefully he will have made the right decision!  It was just an incredible lesson though.  Loved it all.

The only other major thing this week deals with food.  So on Thursday it was Elder Petersen's 1 year anniversary and a bunch of other Elders in our district too so we had a party!  Yay!  I made a cake and frosting which was super fun and he made these really good breadsticks!  It was super cool!  Then yesterday, crap went down.  We both for some reason ate a raw egg.  Don't worry I recorded it.  It was disgusting and really hard to get down but I did it!  I am now even more of a man.  So yeah!  That's pretty significant I would say! :) I'm lovin it!

Anyway hopefully this week goes well...  It's the last week of the transfer. I should be staying with Elder Petersen this next transfer too but we will find out on Thursday!  Anyway have a good week everyone!  Love ya!

Elder Passey

(This picture was taken by a friend and co-worker's of Ryan's who was on a business trip to California and stopped by Brandon's apartment to deliver Brandon's temple bag which he needed and a few other things we put in it for him. I love this picture!) 

August 25th, 2014

Hey Mom!

That's awesome about the kids and school!  Sounds like seminary is great! I loved Sports Psych from Lundgreen.  One of my favorite classes I ever took but I know it’s different there in Grantsville.  

That's really good about the kids in elementary school!  Just tell Matthew that I had to go through the same thing to try to learn Spanish and that now I am good at it so just wait and he will get it!  I want to learn French when I get back since it seems like everyone in the family will know it.  I don't want to be too left out.  

That's awesome about the small little blessings you're getting.  That's really good that things are getting better.  I hope things improve more and more!  Nice to know that the Lord is looking out for you!  

I love you guys!  Things here and there remind me of the Cummings (like I got a Worther's candy thing or whatever it's called) and I'm sure the other grandparents I have are with me too.  

So it's freakin hot every day.  No clouds and it gets up to 100 degrees every so often.  Fun stuff!  I thought it would rain a lot but apparently it only rains once or twice a year...  I'll look forward to Utah weather where it rains for a couple weeks randomly.  I get along with pretty much all the missionaries!  Everyone's pretty nice and yeah!  I don't have any problems with them anyway.  We hang out with Elder Packer and Roberts a lot because they live a block away from us and they have a car so whenever we go do stuff we go with them.  My bike is kind of funny.  Every time I hit a big bump the chain falls off.  I've gotten really good at putting the chain on though!  The language is coming.  I can understand a lot of topical conversations.  So it's kind of off and on when I can understand when they talk.  If they talk about something I can understand then I get it all basically and I'm getting better at understanding fast talking too because some of these people talk REALLY fast.  I'm getting there though!  It’s hard work every day trying to learn more.  The branch is pretty cool!  I like it a lot.  My companion and I are really good friends so that's really nice. :) I fasted in the MTC for a good trainer and I got one so that's really nice to have.  Yeah everyone gets different challenges and I know that I haven't even seen close to what I'm going to face.  Either that or the mission is a lot easier than I thought it would be.  By far easier than the 1000 mile summer.  That was two years ago that I did that...  Such a weird experience to think back on.  

So this week we had a lot more success.  We met a lot of new people and have some fun stories so I'll get them down now to you guys. :)

On Tuesday we met this guy while we were knocking and it was a miracle in finding him in itself because we never go to that area where we went and he was pretty far down the street by the time we got to him.  He invited us in and said it was good we came because his wife was going into open heart surgery sometime that week.  So we talked to him for a while (his name is Gary) and we gave him a blessing.  He has a cockatoo or something like that named Casper and he's super cool!  He's the evil bird from Rio.  He can like talk and do all this crazy stuff and yeah, but we came back yesterday to check on them and the surgery went good.  She should be back soon so that's cool and we talked to him some more.  This guy is probably one of my favorite people ever.  He's so nice and friendly and cool!  Just a big teddy bear basically.  We were talking yesterday and he brought up that he was in the Navy.  So we asked him what he did.  He said he was Special oops.  A sniper for Vietnam.  Crazy moment right there.  It sounded like it really screwed up his life though because he talks about all the therapy he does and has flashbacks and talks about some of the stuff he did and it sounded insane what he had to do and go through.  Must have been awful.  He talked about some reactions he has now if people scare him and it's kind of scary that it still comes back.  But we talked to him for a while and that was super cool but we were going into the kitchen and I put my finger in the cage to say hi to Casper and once I touched it, it grabbed my finger with its talons and tried to eat it!  I yanked my finger out and hurried into the kitchen.  So Gary was in the fridge grabbing ice and looking for something while my finger is dripping on the ground.  I went to the sink and hurried and washed it off and put a bandaid on while Elder Petersen cleaned up the floor and Gary looked back in time to see me put the bandaid on and asked what happened and I said I just snagged my finger on something.  It hurts SO BAD.  It's actually not that bad but I'll for sure have scars forever.  The beak bite went deep and it tore some good amount of skin from its talons so I'm pretty sure that now it has tasted me it's going to hunt me down one night and eat me.  

I ate this nastiest thing I have ever tasted in my life today.  It was Watermelon with lemon juice and smothered in chili pepper.  That's basically Mexican candy and it was the worst thing ever having to eat a bowl full of it.  I literally gagged on the 3rd to last piece and had to take it all with water.  

I am getting really good with chili’s though.  I can take pretty much anything and handle it better than the other Elders I am eating with.  We ate a chili de arbol the other day and the people expected me to freak out or something because I'm new but I didn't even go red apparently.  Fun stuff!

So Friday I think I went to this family who called us and wanted blessings. They wanted us to bless the car.  So I gave a dedicatory prayer for the house and made sure to cover the car too but this family of 3 older Filipinos wanted blessings of healing too so I and Elder Roberts (we were on exchanges because we overbooked ourselves) gave them all blessings of healing.  It was a really cool experience and I'm glad I was able to do it.  Then they fed us and we talked for a long time.  They really liked it when said that Dad was born at Clark AFB.  Apparently the guy there (there was an older guy, older girl and super older grandma lady) worked for Bin Ladin, Osama Bin Ladin's dad over in Saudi Arabia.  That was crazy to hear about.  Thought he was a terrorist when he brought it up.  

Well that's about it this week!  I'll have more stuff to say next week. :)  Hopefully some new investigators!  Have a nice week everyone!  Love ya!

Elder Passey