May Newsletter

Elder Shelby Burton

hello hello there. well we have transfers tomorrow but my companion and I are actually staying, which will be good because we have some amazing people we are working with and the lord has really been helping us find people to teach, so I am really excited for that, the ward is really supporting us which has been a great blessing. Well I love you both tons, and will talk to you soon. loves Love, Elder Burton

Elder Tyler Doyle

We talked to Ty for almost 2 hours on Sunday. We brought Brandon in on a conference call from Hawaii for the first half hour. Tyler says he's nervous to come home cuz he doesn't even know how to talk to a girl. He's totally blown away with Brandon getting married. We assured him that we would help "Re-Americanize" him. He's been happy being out in the middle of the jungle for too long.
He's requested an immediate massage and a trip to the dentist when he gets home. I told him I could arrange that. He thinks he's so fat and needs to start working out the second his plane lands.........Yeah.........I'm feeling really bad for him with his extra 15 pounds!!!! I don't see it in the pictures.

So, 16 weeks to go and I think it will go by fast. Justin's papers are going in this week I think.

Elder Clifton Dudley

Clifton returned from Brigham Young University the end of April. So, now we have about five weeks to finish final preparations before he enters the MTC on June 4th, headed for Mexico, Monterrey East. His "non-farewell" is scheduled for May 25th. We meet at 10:30 in the Rocklin Stake Center. We welcome any of you that would like to attend.

Sister Teresa Hall

" I Love my mission, it is hard. I have had some really breaking moments, where only my Heavenly Father could console me or my Savior, but...it has taught me to lean on them for support. I love the quote in from the Joseph Smith movie when the mom says in a round about way, 'You must gain love and comfort from God, that which man cannot give or take away.' That has also given me deep comfort.

I love the people here, they are Crazy! I see alot of hardship and really bad choices and the effects that it has on people. But by being here, I see that all the good and all the bad that I have gone through in my life has prepared me for THIS mission. To help these people. I give them my heart and I think they feel what my heart is telling them.

Elder Keenan Harris

"I loved my mission!! The Taiwanese people are the best in the whole world!"

-Keenan Harris

Sister Nikki Hydrick

The work is good here. I am doing well and I did send you another letter with pictures from both baptisms and Kathleen and Marcus' wedding. We are working with two new investigator families now. One of them is recently in from duty in Iraq as well. Edward got back and got all sorts of accolades for service but works at the shipyards in Portland and keeps telling us he is not proud of what he did nor what we are doing over there. There's a lot of pain to work through...but he listens and he already knows. He has said he believes Joseph Smith; that he knows God would speak to him and he knows the church is true.
So... they have kids and are so humble and trying to make a better life for them. I expect some amazing changes with them too.
We also got a call last night from a guy we talked to on the street for about 5 minutes two months ago. Since then he's been secretly investigating and he called us last night to inform us that he and his wife want the discussions so they can get baptized. I didn't even remember him at first. You just never can tell what will happen.

Elder Doug Kelley Our son was able to call home from a member’s home when he was out in the field. By the way, our son returned home this week! We are very excited for his return. The spirit he has brought home has strengthened our entire family.

Elder Kevin McGuire
zone conf last week was really really good. elder oaks talked the entire time about the spirit and it was really powerful. he is just a inspirational guy. i got about half of what he said because the other half i had to translate. u win some u loose some. the other cool experience was meeting with this athiest girl (rita) who comes to angol ora and we talked a lot about god and faith. i was really led by the spirit and i could feel the power behind what i was saying. she read and prayed and is really excited. she said on the phone, ?in the alma chapter he likens a seed to our faith. it is such a sweet example, it grows there are roots. i was smiling the whole time i read it.? she came to church and loved it! she said she was really surprised. we had another new guy come to church on sunday, so we will see what happens with him. we also met with a pro soccer player fom ghana that we streeted. he only speaks eng. but lives here and plays soccer, so whitti and i taught him. it was another good program. it was entirely different to hear all this in my own language. it was so incredible to bear simple testimony about Christ and the bom in english. we are meeting with him again. then, i gave a talk in church based around the talk of ?its true isnt it then what else matters?? i had prayed a lot to really be given an idea of how to address this and my prayers were really answered.

Elder Alex Morgan

"I wanted to share an experience with you that happened last week. When the new missionaries arrived last week, one of the trainers, Sister Reeves, was walking around the corner when President Yardley saw her crying. President of course was fearful of what happened. (You could only imagine anything could've gone wrong) and in almost a voice

of sobbing she told President that her mom had decided to be baptized! She was crying because she was so happy. Later when all of us missionaries were out talking with her she said: "...and my dad is taking the missionary lessons and is reading & praying about the Book of Mormon." She is witnessing firsthand how her missionary

efforts here in Boise are blessing her mom and dad at home."

Elder Cameron Pettey

On the last day that E Shurtliff and I were together some member hooked us up with some money and told us to go to a bomb churrascaria. It was way nice and had tons of food. Sooo good. And I tried an octopus tentacle! It didn’t taste like much but a little chewy and weird feeling tentacles in your mouth. Oh and then later I still had a few things on my plate but not much thank goodness because I was cutting some meat a bit too close to the edge I guess and my whole plate just flipped over onto my lap. hahahahah. It was embarrassing, a waiter laughed at me, but hilarious.

This week was cool. We visited Aurelio and Shirley this week and he was looking for a job. But he lost his documents, diplomas, etc in a fire when someone decided to light their house on fire. And Brazil doesn’t do anything because they are corrupt. And he couldn’t find the copies he made either. So he was really down about it and we tried to help him out. E Shurtliff told a little experience he had about praying to find something. The next time we visited them he was happy and had a job. When we left the family prayed to help find it and right after the prayer he looked in his wallet (which he already had done like 15 times) and he found the paper! How awesome is that. I was so happy to hear that. Cool that they actually did what we taught them and that they had such immediate results. He has already finished 1st Nephi and has made a goal to finish the Book of Mormon by like Oct or something! ha. So awesome. He’s like oh yeah I read the Bible in a year and I figure the BoM is smaller so I can finish faster. hahah

Elder Jared Roberts
My greenie, meu filho as we call them, went out and marked this elect family for baptism, I´m proud of him. Guess what day, that´s right, april 26th haha. We are marking everyone for that day telling them it is a special day and could be even more special if they got baptized. Then they ask why it is already special and we tell them its my birthday and they like the fact that we want to spend my birthday at their baptism, you gotta work the angles sometimes, you know what I´m talkin about?
We have some investagators that are straight up gold, we went to their house after inviting them to read and pray about the church and we were like "so you guys read right?" and they were like "yeah we did", and I said, "ok, so we know that we have to do something after we read right? What is it?" and thy both said "pray", which most people don´t say, cuz they forget. And I said "yes, did you pray?".. they sort of look at each other and then she just blurts out," alright- well from what i felt after praying, I´m getting baptized" By the way, she had never even been to church before. Then he said that he felt the desire to go to church too. Their names are haróldo and durce, they are getting baptized on april 26th, it´s gonna be a big day.

Elder Jared Schmidt

Well I do want to tell you about the family we got the referral for last week THEY ARE AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!! oh man they are incredible and really have given me that spiritual boost I have been needing lately. They are so ready and prepared. On the first lesson the spirit was so strong and we gave them the 24th of this month for baptism! They want us to come by every day and teach them. When we come over they act like kids at Christmas. the husband was raised by a Jewish mother and a Baptist father. He has studied religion so much both ancient Hebrew and Christianity. When he reads the book of Mormon he gets so excited because he says, this is the link! this is the link between ancient Judaism and Christianity. He loves the Book of Mormon and already is through 1st Nephi and wants to read the whole thing before his baptism. His wife is equally amazing! In fact we had to give them their own copies of the BOM because they fought over who got the Book of Mormon for the day. On Saturday night we took them to the church to give them a tour. The spirit was so strong. When we walked into the chapel Brother Gray ( that is their name) said you can really feel the spirit of the Lord in this room. They were really quiet and just stood in the chapel for a couple of minutes soaking it all up. We ended by showing them the baptismal font and they almost started crying! On Sunday we took them to church and they loved every minute of it. In fact it was fast and testimony meeting as you know and they both got up and bore their testimonies!!!!! and they were so powerful. I could not believe it! I was floored. This was their first time ever going to an LDS meeting and they bore their testimonies about Joseph Smith and the book of Mormon! It was a very powerful meeting.

Elder Jared Shillingburg

Jared returned home on April 16^th at 10 P.M. It was So exciting going to the airport to pick him up. I was So nervous all day I could barely stand still.
The next day at 2 p.m. the mail came with Jordan’s Mission call. Jordan will enter the MTC on August 13^th 2008 to serve in the Antofagasta, Chili Mission

It was quite a wonderful two days at our home!

Elder Cameron Smith

Yet another great and marvelous week. I can't explain all of the feelings that I have been through this week. I have been sad and happy, angry and annoyed, frustrated and have felt the spirit so strongly. This week the most eventful day was probably our appointment with Pasqaule. We met him at 5:30 and he said that he had a lot of questions about the Joseph Smith and the organization of our church meetings because he came on Sunday and was really interested. We had decided however that we were going to teach him a first lesson about the Restoration and watch the movie The Restoration to explain about Joseph Smith. It went so well and the spirit was so strong. We started by reading Hel 5:30 and told him to pay attention to the spirit. We talked about our Heavenly Father and the importance of families, Prophets and dispensations and the life and ministry of Jesus Christ and then we watched the movie. I love the scene when Joseph is walking into the grove and the MOTAB is singing in the background. The spirit is just booming at this point. After the movie Anziano Mckee bares amazing testimony and I follow with mine and we are just expecting him to say that he wants to be baptized. It was just so amazing the expression on his face. He was really touched by the story of Joseph and I could tell that he really felt the spirit.

I love you so much and I pray for you!

Elder Kyle Smith

We had 12 investigators and church yesterday!!! It was amazing, they just kept walking in. Members just kept bringing in friends, a lot of our investigators showed up and some people I have never seen before. It was incredible. Our gospel principles class was packed and we were so busy making sure everyone got properly introduced and enjoyed their first church experience. The work is really progressing and it is just increable to see things pick up from what they have been in the past. We don’t have anyone with a baptismal date because we keep running into a bunch of problems with immigration issues and stuff like that, but we are getting closer.

We are still working hard and finding more people. We have so much work and so many people to take care of it is ridiculous. I am really enjoying all of it. I really hope that I get to stay here for a long time.

Elder Nicholas Takis
"But let me see, this week... ok, Monday was Norma's funeral and it was nice kinda hard but I'm sooo happy for her.. shes home.. um Tuesday we had like 3 appointments and we tracted into this hispanic family that wants us to come over and teach them.. they pretty much all speak no english except for Rojello who is like a senior in high school or something..but they are way open, I'm so excited to teach them, its a
huge family..you know how that is.. anyways, Wednesday we taught Norma Jeans sister Mary Anne and her family and it was crazy.. her brothers were drunk and being disrespectful and stuff and I asked them to leave or something and they wanted to fight..haha, i just laughed and tried to keep teachin.. Mary's having a hard time reading the BoM cause shes not used to the
old english so we've made it a goal to read everything with her and explain it all, shes way receptive.. what a nice lady, I think she's about 40 and just a sweetheart.. We were tracting out Brown st. and its this gorgeous little neighborhood at about 5 o clock and ran into this lady, long story short, she has an
autistic kid that likes running from her so we pretty much taught a lesson on the run.. unfortunatly our efforts seemed to be in vain.. she doesnt have time right now for another lesson.. oh well.. !! Seed Planted!!l

Elder Tyson Wheeler

Your prayers for me and our branch are sending us soaring. At my suggestion Leo Lira is a ward missionary and I might as well give him a tag. He is from the beautiful country of Venezuela and has returned to activity with a bang. He said he was preparing himself, because when he does something he goes all or nothing. I really look up to him. The branch is fired up about the work! From March 2008 Liahonas to Predicad Mi Evangelio’s and we are just getting started. Yesterday we had 14 investigators at church! All our investigators are all so good? Gold, pure gold.

Two of the investigators at church were Lucio and Felipe. We are teaching them with a group of about 4-5 coworkers. They are illiterate. We promised them that by the time we help them finish the Book of Mormon they won’t even remember what it was like not to read. And I shared with them Matt 20:30-34. We all felt the Spirit.

Elder Carter Zufelt

so i guess the foutzs went out there and called you. they said that they called the house and someone screamed into the phone, i told her that it was definitely my awesome family!!!! we are still teaching mike and i have some awesome news about him for
you!! we went by 6 days ago to check on him and he was passed out in a chair holding his cell phone. we knocked and he didnt do anything. i spoke loudly into the screen which was open and he came to and started mumbling some wierd stuff. he came to the door and was wobbling like crazy. he was so drunk and he had emptied 2 12 packs of beer!! i was so stunned at how drunk he was. it was bad. that same night we got him to try and quit for 1 month. i went up to the counter and started pouring the beer down the sink (it feels so good to do that). when all that was gone he showed us his "secret stash" of liquor and we poured that as well. he had alot!!! today is his 6th day of being sober!!!!! it is so exciting!!! this is the window that we need to use wisely. we need to get him to church while he can feel the spirit!! hopefully we can get him there. it is so cool to see how much of a different person he really is. alcohol is HORRIBLE stuff. dave austin picked a time to read the BOM daily and he started that as well. he is also attempting to give the chew up again. tobacco is horrible stuff as well. hopefully he makes it, he can with the Lord. we are still teaching the 9 year old, Candice, the district is doing good. 4 and 8th wards are tearing it up. we are trying to change different things to bring different results. we have lately been emphasizing service with the ward and investigators, so i'll let you know how it goes. it sure does feel good to work hard and help people out. dad and mom thanks for teaching me how to work hard. it helps alot and i'm thankful for it (i never thought i'd say that, but it is true) thanks. well, being a missionary is still amazing!! i love it and love serving the Lord. this is where i am supposed to be and it is hard but sooooo worth it. stay strong and true and know that i love you. bye-elder zufelt"