Week 13

Chandler had his first baptism!  He was very excited and he sent some pictures.  He is happy that he is no longer a "greenie" and can now be the senior companion.  I can't believe it's been three months already!  Time certainly flies.

Mom,

That's awesome! The poem was inspired!! Haha! I did get your package a
couple of weeks ago and I forgot to mention that last time, but I did get
it and I enjoyed those pop tarts and cereal bars very much! We had our
first baptism. That was really awesome! The dad is less active and the
mom is not a member. All the kids have been or will be baptized and
we're working to activate the dad again because if he goes back then
his wife will be baptized right then. So we are working with them to
get her baptized and him back to church! We have found
tons of potential investigators, but they're all out of our area so we
just keep handing off these golden people to other missionaries. Haha!
It kinda sucks, but hey, we're still finding people. We had a lesson
with this investigator that lives behind us named Brad and his
daughter Stephanie. We showed them the Mormon Message "Mountains to
Climb" and he is about to have a surgery and they're scared and after
we showed that video the spirit was sooooo strong and they both just
started crying. It was a pretty neat experience. I took over the area
twice this week on exchanges, which was neat. That means I was the
boss!! Haha! I enjoy being in charge way too much! This is the last
P-Day of the transfer, predictions are Elder Taito is leaving and I'm
staying and becoming District Leader. So I'll let you know next week
how close our predictions were. For the Christmas care package I would like a spiral
bound hymn and children's songbooks and as many CDs as you can afford.

My favorite scripture is.... Drumroll please!! Moroni 9:25 it's a great one!

We'll be looking for you in conference!! Love you all! Good luck in Idaho!!! Over and
out talk to you guys next week!!!

Love,
Elder Colton :)

Week 12

My sweet son made me laugh and cry with his email this week.  I can't believe how much he is changing on his mission.  He's maturing and learning to appreciate the little things in life.

Mom,

Its crazy! I'm going to miss that home. But! I'll go back and see it and meet the new people that live there. Heck if they ain't LDS I'll convert them! Haha!  We haven't had transfers yet. That is in two weeks, but that transfer will mark three months and the end of my training! Super excited to stop training! I'm just ready to be a missionary that isn't a greenie. Haha! 

So my story for this week, we're working with this Less-active member (I won't name names) but he has had a rough go in this life. His wife died and he learned like a month ago she was going behind his back and all that stuff. So he got in a relationship with this "girl" on some dating website in England and she scammed him out of every dime he has... He wasn't rich to begin with, but now he is going to lose everything. Well so we talked with him a bit and he said he gets down on himself and makes stupid choices because he doesn't thank God for what he has already. He has a home, a car, an a computer. But that isn't enough. He needs a girlfriend and a bigger home and acceptance and just worldly things. He told us all this and by then it was time to go so we left and we were walking back to the apartment and I looked up to the stars (It was like 9:30 :P) and just said thank you for everything I already have. After that I felt like I needed to write this and show it to him. I haven't shown it to him yet because we just haven't met with him this week, but I felt like this was directly inspired for him. Anyways here it is. 

I open my eyes, it's the start of a new day. 

I pull on some pants and I get on my way. 

I brush my teeth and I get in the shower. 

I go downstairs, work starts in an hour. 

I shove breakfast down my throat and put on my shoes, 

I pull on my coat, it's the working mans blues. 

I do this everyday, you could say I'm pro. 

But really I'm not I just go with the flow. 

But therein lies the problem I go with the flow, 

taking no time to look and explore where I go. 

I wake up in the morning to my alarms ring. 

And I think it's too early to think of anything. 

I should go to my window and look outside. 

I should look out and thank God I'm alive. 

For he's the reason I opened my eyes. 

He's the reason we have those gorgeous blue skies. 

And most times we lack to thank God for our lives because
we're too busy working and swallowed by pride. 

If we would look up and look at the stars 

we might come to realize what we really are. 

We're children of God, the one, the most high. 

The one we can thank for our precious lives. 

If we would slow down and take more time, 

to smell the roses, and to make this climb. 

We would know who we are 

and we would reach for the stars 

striving to live to our fullest potential and live
with God in his home, the Celestial. 

That's my little poem. And, being a guitarist and being raised by an avid music lover I put guitar chords to it and made a song out of it. Haha! But it sounds just as good in the form of a poem and I feel as if this will make an impact in his life to change and thank God for his circumstances he's in instead of trying to be more than he can be. That's my story and the highlight of my week. Hope everyone is safe. I miss all of you!!! And love you guys tons!!! Tell the ward I miss them. 

Love, 

Elder Colton

Week 11

This was another quiet week for Chandler.  His email was a short one, but here you go:

Mom,

Let's see my week was actually a very uneventful week. We will have this kid Carson Gorze over for a 3 day mini mission so that will be really neat to have him over with us. We have a baptism in two weeks. We got two people to commit to baptism last week so we're just looking for a date for them. We found a Nerf gun in our apartment and we were dorking around with that all morning yesterday it was way too much fun. Haha! Our church starts at 1pm so we wake up, finish studies, and then hangout till 1 o Clock so yeah we get bored and start doing stupid stuff with in this case a Nerf gun! Haha! Other than that we've just been teaching and all that missionary stuff! I love you too! 

Love, 

Elder Colton :)

Week 10

Chandler sent this picture with his email this week.  I just love seeing his handsome face!  He also sent me two pictures of the new socks he bought, but I figured it would be best to spare you all the sight of his hairy legs!

Mom,

There's all sorts of crazies here it's nuts! Yeah Elder Taito and I are still together. He's most likely leaving next transfer so I'll get to take over the area which will be fun, and I might even be district leader next transfer depending on how everything plays out so yeah that should be cool. We have Sister Haggemann she's awesome she feeds us whenever if ever we need it and her husband leaves the football games on so when we stop by we get our tender mercy and watch a little football. Haha! Alright, so my crazy story for this week is, I gave a blessing to this girl who couldn't talk she was starting to get some like bulge in her vocal chords and she was going to need surgery and all that stuff. So anyway, we gave her a blessing and by that Sunday she could talk again! It was so neat! I was pumped! I just wanted to go and give everyone blessings. Haha! It was nice it was a huge faith booster for us. We are meeting with a guy we tracted into, his name is Larry. He is very smart in everything! He's very promising on our second meeting he asked for the Doctrine and Covenants!? That's crazy! Nobody does that so hopefully we can have him on date soon. We now have four people on date for baptism! That's so great! Two of them we got last night! So we're starting to have a lot of success here all of our goals are in the green which means we're reaching our goals which means we're working hard because we're setting tough goals. So that's really neat those are the highlights of my week minus the obvious stuff like we tract a lot and walk in the heat a lot and all that sucky stuff! Haha! But the good outweighs the bad so it's not bad out here at all it's a lot of fun! Things are going well here I'm healthy I'm happy and I'm eating so that's good! Haha have a good week y'all! Love ya guys! 

Love, 

Elder Colton :) 

Week 9

Other than the fact that Chandler met Jesus, his week was pretty quiet :)

Mom,

Not much is going on. We have a baptism this month and next month so that's really sweet!! We had a crazy guy tell us he was Jesus and that he smoked meth with angels on a regular basis and then he continued to say how he saw God aka his literal dad because he's Jesus and then he took our Mormon.org card and said he'd come by our apartment and have like some personal Jesus time with us. I just busted up! It was rude I know but I couldn't believe it! I was just waiting for the lighting to strike him! This guy seriously thought he was Jesus and yeah I just started laughing so hard. Oh yeah he said he was perfect. Yeah he said he's never sinned. And he said he has a degree higher than a doctorate in the fields of math, science, physics, and theology. He claimed also he was the smartest man in the world because he's Jesus. Haha crazy guy! Oh we've been doing a ton of tracting! :P Oh boy it sucks! Haha! My companion loves it but it's so ineffective I've been trying to come up with other ideas that would have more success because we knock for an hour or two and not a person expresses interest so yeah that just drives me nuts! Haha! Well anyway that's it for me. Have a good week guys! I love you all!!!! 

Love, 

Elder Colton :) 

Week 8

It sounds like Chandler had a pretty fun experience this week.  I'm not sure his mission president would approve, but he has always had his own way of doing things ;)

Mom,

I went on exchanges with Elder Russell and we decided we would do something different, something somebody hasn't done. So we grabbed our guitars and decided we would go guitar finding. We said a prayer and asked that we will put forth the effort and in return we want to see miracles happen. And no sooner after we said amen than people start honking and waving at us and we started walking up and down the main drag playing music and after about 5 minutes these ladies stopped us and started talking to us. They asked us who we were representing and we told them the LDS church and this lady named Angie started asking tons of awesome questions! And we had all the answers! It was so neat! She is like golden! She told us to come back the next day and teach her because she wants to change and she wants to be sealed to her husband and live with him forever! The only downside is that I was on exchanges in someone else's area so I won't get to teach her, but I will get to hopefully hear how things are going with her. So we left her and about 30 seconds later some guys come out of this restaurant we walked by and they said hey it's karaoke night and we want to hear some music. And we were kind of skeptical at first then we decided like hey we prayed for people to come to us and they are so we went in. Haha! Elder Russell wasn't comfortable playing and singing so he sat with the crowd and I got up and I announced myself and and that we were LDS missionaries and then I performed my solo piece Book of Mormon stories to set the tone then I sang Book of Mormon Stories and that actually drew a lot of smiles. They thought that was great and then they asked if I knew anything else and I said yes and sang House of the Rising Sun and Sweet Home Alabama for them and they were all clapping and excited and we handed out all of our mormon.org cards and they said we were the coolest missionaries they've ever seen in their lives and that they'd check out the website and get some questions answered. So we planted a whole lot of seeds in there. So then we left that place and as we were walking back to the apartment 2 more people stopped and talked to is and told us they appreciated us and what we do and all that stuff. Then we got back to he apartment and we got a call from the temple saying that somebody from the restaurant found my iPad that I had lost and he knew we were LDS so he drove to the temple and asked one of the people coming out to take it to the guy inside and have him call us and tell us he has my iPad and that he would be by the restaurant and we could come grab it. On our way walking there we ran into a Jewish guy who wanted to bash and Elder Russell really likes bashing so he was just going at it and I was just standing there quiet and I was just getting super bugged with what my companion and the guy were saying to each other so I just stepped up and yelled time out! This is stupid! And I just said we're not changing our faith your not changing yours I respect that I love you, God loves you God bless have a good night and bye bye and I grabbed Elder Russell and we went and got my iPad and went home for the night. So yeah that was my awesome miracle filled night it was a great experience! There's my weekend highlight! Haha! It was great! I performed for people like I sang and stuff aren't you proud!? I used my talents!!! Haha! Anyway, I'm having a blast I'm really enjoying my self and having a lot of fun. Time is flying! One transfer down already! (Which by the way I'm in Central Point for another transfer they say I'll probably be here six months!) I hope things are great back home! I hope you're not too worried about me. I imagine you can't be with the house and stuff. Haha! I think about you all everyday too!! I love you!!!! 

Love, 

Elder Colton :) 

Week 7

Nothing terribly exciting happened this week, but I've copied his email just for those who want to read it.

Mom,

Sorry we had our P-day canceled yesterday for a zone conference we had a seventy come and speak to us it was really great! The weeks do fly by transfers are this week I'll probably stay here. It's predicted I'll be here for six months so yeah I'll start getting comfortable here in Central Point. haha!  

Things are going. The work here is tough. People are just set in their ways or have already been "saved!" Haha! But we have a few investigators and some progressing investigators we have one set baptismal date that just fell into our laps and we have someone that we're trying to set on date but I think I told you about him. So the work is moving. I write in my journal every chance I have time I'm trying my best to write in it often. We have all kinds of cool spiritual moments when tracting and teaching. It's really neat. I wish I had like unlimited time to email you all these stories but we have so many missionaries waiting to email you get like 15 minutes and then you trade off the computer so I'll start recording my stories over the week so I can just copy and paste them in the email really fast! 

I love you too!!! I can't believe how fast it goes I'll be home before I know it!! 

See ya in two years!! 

Love, 

Elder Colton :)