Scottie with a prior companion, Elder Chavez!

Hey Family!

Sorry I haven't emailed an update in a while...we've been crazy busy, and then I got super bad  food poisoning last week, but I'm feeling so much better now. So here's some of the highlights of the last few weeks:

So over the course of the last 3 weeks, the work here has just exploded. The Lord is truly blessing us in our efforts to invite others to come unto Him.

It all started on September 2nd when we had our Mission Leadership Council (for all Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders in the Salt Lake City West Mission - Scottie is a Zone Leader). The meeting started at 6:50 AM, but we're used to getting up early so it was no biggie. The first hour of the meeting was led by Elder Arnold of the Quorum of the 70, and that was intense. He's got a very strong, type A personality. He kind of tore into us about making sure we were doing everything possible to be the examples to the mission, since we were the zone leaders and sister training leaders. He explained that our divine motivation for everything should be helping our brothers and sisters return to their Heavenly Father. Just the way he explained everything got us all fired up. We also talked about goals for the mission. Later in the meeting, Pres. Swain said that too many people in the mission weren't hitting the standards of excellence, so he lowered them and we all made a plan to get every companionship hitting them, then we'd move them back up. He changed the standard from 15 lessons with a member present to 10. Jarvis and I were already hitting the 15 mark, so we made goals to keep that going higher as well as get more baptisms in our area.

At the Mission Leadership Council

Throughout that week, we really applied everything we learned and were really bold with baptismal invitations. We invited 5 people to be baptized, and they all said yes! It was so exciting and just a testimony to me of the truthfulness of the Gospel, I love it.

Fun note, on Thursday, 9/4/14, we went down to Temple Square, and I saw Ayala Noguiera (the girl with orange hair that's dancing in that picture of me that's on the lds.org site haha): Scottie and Ayala on church website (Ayala is from our area, they attended youth activities together before their missions), she serves as a Temple Square Sister (missionary) right now. 

Elder Jarvis, Levi, Pepe and Scottie at Temple Square

On Friday, 9/5/14, I started feeling sick with a cold/flu-like symptoms. That was no fun, and it had me exhausted haha. Life is good though! Our zone training went well and hopefully I'll get better soon!

Happy Birthday Sophia (Scottie’s youngest sister)!!!!!! 9/6/14. I can't believe she's already 14, how fast is time flying?!?!

9/7/14: Today, Jarvis and I spoke in stake conference (a meeting for all congregations in the stake/area where he is serving), and I think that went well. Then we had our first meeting with Alberto. He's the brother of a recent convert in our branch, and he's been to church twice, but he just moved in with them for the foreseeable future, so we met with him tonight. He shared his strong desire to be baptized, and we felt impressed to invite him to be baptized in two weeks (since he'd already been to church a few times), and he said yes! We're way excited for that. Then, we did a fast today so that Allie (investigator) would be able to get permission from her parents to get baptized. She said that she talked to her parents again, and they didn't say yes, but they opened up and were okay with her going to church and stuff! The power of fasting is real!

9/11/14: I can't believe it's been 13 years since the attack on the twin towers. All I can say is I'm proud to be an American and live in a country that gives me so many freedoms. I'm thankful to all those who have sacrificed so that I can have these freedoms, and I'll always keep them in my prayers.

9/13/14: The cold I've been having hit its peak today. In the morning, Elisa called us and asked if we could help them pull things out at their house for a yard sale, so we got to help with that, and then she gave us some medicine. It made us super sleepy, so as soon as 9pm hit, we were home, planning, and asleep haha.

9/14/14: Today was an awesome Sunday...until 10:40pm. It was a truly good day at church and everything, all went really well and we had a few good lessons after church. Our dinner was dropped off to us, pupusas de chicharron. Jarvis wasn't hungry so he didn't eat, but I
did. After FHE (Family Home Evening) with the Balderas family, we got our numbers report ready, called it into the assistants....and that's when my stomach started doing backflips. Around 10:40 I threw up for the first time....and then did it every half hour until 10 AM the next day. I didn´t get any sleep, and it was rough.

Some of the "numbers" the Zone Leaders have to report

9/15/14: Monday. It was a recovery day for me. I tried to sleep, didn't eat anything all day, tried to get some liquids in me, but I threw those up for a while haha. When Jarvy (Elder Jarvis, his companion) went to play ball (It was p-day/preparation day), he dropped me off at the Balderas’ house so Pepe could be my companion for the afternoon, but I was just trying to get some sleep in. They're such an awesome family, they truly treat me like family and look out for me. I got home around 6:30, fell asleep at 7, and that's all I remember until 8am on Tuesday.


9/16/14: Tuesday. Today was much better! I still can't eat much, but I wasn't throwing up as often, only a few times all day. We did our District Leader Training meeting today, had an awesome lesson with the Santana family (getting baptized on the 27th of this month), and then
sleep.

9/17/14: Wednesday. We spent all afternoon biking copies of the Book of Mormon all over the zone to get them to missionaries. The shipment we ordered got delayed, so they finally got here and people needed them really bad haha. We dropped off about 100 of them on bike, which was fun. We had some good lessons today. I'm still not hungry, and I feel a little weak, but I'm getting there!

9/19/14: Friday. Man, I finally got to feeling mostly better. First day since Sunday I haven't thrown up haha, so I'm a happy camper. Today was chill, just some solid lessons and getting Alberto ready for his baptism tomorrow.

Scottie with his Zone - The Granger B Zone!

9/20/14: Today was an amazing day. We spent all morning participating in the stake community fair, we set up a missionary table there! It was cool. Then, we went home and discovered a small problem. Some onions in a cabinet we don't use too much had rotted, and when we opened the cabinet for the first time in a while, there were bugs and this disgusting black juice everywhere. Let's just say I was thoroughly grossed out. But we manned up and spent about 2 hours deep cleaning our kitchen, which is super clean now! We had dinner with Pres. Atwater, then the baptism of Alberto. Even though he showed up half an hour late haha, it was one of my favorite baptisms of my mission. His sister gave the talk on baptism, his brother-in-law, Emmanuel, baptized him, and his 2 little nephews gave the prayers. It was beautiful. I'll send pictures!

Elder Higgins, Emanuel, Alberto and Elder Jarvis (and one of the Sanhchez children)

Alberto and his sister's family

9/21/14: Sunday. Today was an interesting day for us. The Ogden Temple got rededicated today, so all normal church services were cancelled. Kind of weird to tell our investigators not to come to church one Sunday haha. We went to the first of 3 dedication ceremonies, and it was beautiful. Elder Bednar and Pres. Monson spoke, it was really cool to see. We had all afternoon open to visit with people, so we enjoyed that opportunity with 4 lessons. Then, we had pozole (one of his favorite Mexican dishes now!) with Hermano de Alba, taught Braka, and then had family home evening with los Balderas. It was a wonderful day, and numbers were really good this week! We had 24 lessons this week, and the other 13 companionships in the zone added on another 87 lessons, so our zone total was the highest it's ever been: 111 (with members present). Then, we had 18 new investigators and 13 new returning members. Things are looking good for the Granger B zone! Life is good, I'm feeling healthier, and looking forward to another week :)

Love always,

Scottie

(From his emails to his Aunt Tammy):

Hey Tía Tammy!! (Sept 8^th)

My last week was super, sounds like yours was too! 

I am so glad that I stayed here, this area is amazing (He did not get transferred to a new area). Things are going so well. We added two new families this last week, the Santana family and the Barragan family. 

My biggest mental challenge has been just learning self-control in timing. It's all up to us to make sure we're working hard all the time, nobody is on us about it all the time. But to have success in missionary work, you have to be diligent all the time, so you have to dominate self-mastery. My mission has truly taught me how to love people and understand people from different walks of life. I've truly connected with Hispanic culture as well, and I love it. It's cool seeing the world through the eyes of a different people, you learn so much. 

New word this week: inolvidable - unforgettable. Every week, I have experiences that are unforgettable. 

I'm doing so well. I love and miss you like crazy though. I've met people in this area that will be lifelong friends though, so hopefully you'll get to meet them one day. They said they're going to come visit Georgia when I'm home, so we'll see :) 

I love you!

Scottie 

Hey Aunt Tammy! (Sept. 22)

Yeah, being sick was no fun, but I'm much better now :) 

I'm glad you had a great trip to GA (she currently lives in Iowa but was visiting), I miss it so much. The picture you sent of the beach (Tybee Island) was gorgeous, looked like it was a professional shot. I can't wait to go to the beach.  

Tyler (Tammy’s son, Scottie’s oldest cousin, he is currently living in Savannah) looked really good too, glad you got to see him. 

I'm doing well now, no worries! :) 

Word of the week: recuperar - it means to get better or recuperate haha, thought it was fitting for this week. 

I love you Aunt Tammy, can't believe it's almost October, just closer and closer to seeing you! 

Hope you have a week that's as awesome as you are. 

Love always, 

Scottie