Feb 3, 2010:
This week was temple week so p-day is today instead of monday. I love going to the temple but this was my first time in the Vegas temple. Oh my goodness. It is so beautiful inside! I was never impressed by pictures of the outside, but the inside is sooooooo beautiful. Probably the most beautiful one I've ever been in. Probably because it was funded directly by all the rich members in Vegas. If I remember right, Tami served by the temple for awhile and got to go almost weekly. Is that right? That would be so cool.This week has been hard and tiring but really good. I love my new comp. Elder Taylor. He says some weird things sometimes and is kinda blunt, but he is really cool. He is more motivated to be obedient than I am, so that is a little humbling. He is probably saving my mission in terms of my faith in other missionaries and myself. He is great and we are working super hard to get our area going for the first time in about a year. They had some pretty bad missionaries for the past year. =S Pray for us. My faith isn't adecquate yet.I will definitely take on the February challenge, though I'm a little behind. In addition to my studies, I will study at least a chapter out of 3 Nephi each night. I think that is a good goal.I had a cool insight the other day from Elder Holland. He was talking about education but this also applies to life and the gospel.The word discipline (think of the meaning when used: self-discipline) comes from disciplina meaning teaching or learning. disciplina comes from discipulus meaning pupil or student. So when we are a disciple of Christ, we bridle our passions and discipline our natural man tendencies. Sacrifice them if you will for bigger and better things. When we are a disciple of Christ we are learning how to be like Christ. He is literally our teacher and we are his pupils. It means a little more than just follower or believer. We are actually little examples of the savior's verbal teachings. Though this is deep, when we are disciples, we are God's in training. I thought that was pretty cool. I'm glad we have a perfect example.I have to go, but I love you all. thank you for your support and letters and prayers. I love you-Elder Blakemore
Feb 8, 2010
Feb 16, 2010
So, not much has happened since Wednesday. We were going to hike Lone Mountain today for studies, but our ZL's didn't ask permission from the APes in time so we weren't able to go. lame. Dean and Vicky didn't show up to their lesson yesterday and when we tried to call him, it sounded like he answered and hung up immediately. lame. I thought he was going to be a solid investigator, but i guess not. Granted, they were probably at a party for the super bowl, but he could have answered his phone and told us that. Stupid. So yesterday was pretty much a waste... no investigators at church, no lessons, no nothing. No place to go have a super bowl party. there was a stake training on Elder Perry's program last night. Do they do that worldwide/nationwide or just in NV?My companion is awesome. I love him and I don't even have to try to this time. We are working hard, but I have picked up a lot of bad habits from other companions. I don't know if I should be his polisher. I felt like I was a pretty good missionary when I was being trained, but now I feel like a middle of the road missionary. And you know what happens to things in the middle of the road, they get run over. But if you look at the big picture, a middle of the road missionary in this mission is at the bottom of the dung heap compared to the rest of the missionaries in the world.Negative negative negative. i'm not feeling very positive this week. I guess that I've thoroughly proven that I can't have a good attitude in this email so you can probably just disregard it and wait until next week when I might have something good to say. I'm sorry for being so selfish.I love all of you.-Matt
Hola. This week was pretty uneventful. We spent 8.5 hours tracting last week which, for this mission, is a lot of tracting. The rest of the time was spent making visits to people that weren't home. We only had 4 lessons this week which is pretty terrible. Much of our focus these past few weeks have been getting our faces out there to all the members, especially those in leadership. Elder Taylor and I have talked about this quite a bit and from what we have seen, this area has not seen good missionaries in about a year. We can tell from comments and how people act that the trust the members have in missionaries has been pretty low. It is kinda exciting/annoying that we are able to repair that in these wards. Hopefully before I leave, the area will have picked up and we will have some investigators. Another thing we are focusing on is member missionary work. We all know that it is the best way, but sometimes getting it to happen is hard. But especially in this area, there is not much that we can do since 60-70% of our area is gated and our area is probably only 8 square miles. Probably not even that big.We are getting excited for the Ward Fast that we have set up for our 2 wards. The idea is that a family will be fasting for missionary experiences/missionary work every day for the month of March. I know that something will come of it. If not tangible results, the members are going to have an increased testimony of the need for missionary work. It's hard to realize what it is all about when you aren't completely focused on it like we are for 2 years, but they will know how important it is after they have fasted for a month. We may not see the effects in these wards, but I know that it will impact many people because of these wards efforts.We are also getting ready to create invitations. I had this idea last transfer and Redden didn't think much of it, but Taylor's ward back home actually did this this last month. They created invitations for people to pass out and they had a nice picture of the church on the front and on the inside it invited you to attend a special service especially for visitors. It had statements of what we believe on there and services that we offer. In his ward, the sunday that they were inviting people to attend, they had 25 visitors!!!! Amazing! We have also discussed holding an open house for the new chapel, etc. And these aren't just our ideas, they have also been discussed with our ward leaders. I love it. I am so excited for everything that is going to happen in the near future.I wish we had some snow down here in Vegas. It is already starting to warm up after our 4 inches of rainfall last month (which is the yearly average for Vegas). It is probably 70 today. I'm not ready for the heat yet. I've woken up the last 2 nights with my throat on fire because it is so dry. I'll probably need to buy a humidifier for the summer so that I can sleep through the night.My watch battery died a couple days ago. So I'm searching for a new watch.Our texting just got cancelled and so now our means of communication with at least 5 people that we work with regularly has vanished. Our phone was the only one that was able to text and they finally figured it out. Now that there are actually good missionaries in the area that wouldn't abuse texting privileges. Stupid. Redden would text people all the time, but they don't figure it out until he leaves and I'm actually trying to use it for good. Irritating.I want to play the new Mario Bros. game for the Wii. It looks way fun.I think I'm jinxed for mail in this apt. A lot of stuff that I have been expecting has never turned up in our mail box. Irritating. Elder Taylor gets a letter every day from his girlfriend. He's engaged to her... weird. She is pretty hot though. ;)Probably going to have to go to CT summer of '11 to Taylor's wedding or something. Good thing we are like best friends or else I would be really annoyed by all this stuff. We already have plans on visiting NYC and going to some Broadway shows and stuff. fun.Well, that is about it. Thanks for all of the support. I love reading about all of the adventures everybody has. I love you all.-Elder Blakemore
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