08/24/2015

Dear Family,

Here is the update for this week. And is still doing well. It seems like she has recommitted herself to be baptized on September 12th. She worked from 8:00-5:00 on Sunday and came to sacrament meeting during her lunch hour. Whatever works! Just in case anybody is wondering, don't work on Sunday! Haha. It makes life so much easier. We had another good lesson with her on Sunday evening. We also invited her to another baptism in the stake and she really wants to go to that so that will be good for her.

Here is the update for the other investigators: K isn't progressing. He won't come to church. He wants to quit his addiction, but he doesn't want to right now so we are at a plateau. We are still meeting with him, though. We haven't met with Ph for awhile, but we are meeting with her this Tuesday so I will let you know how that goes. Here is the story with Les. She still meets with us and wants to get re-baptized. However, she has this baby kitten that can't take care of itself and she can't find anybody else to take care of it while she is at church. It happened last week and we thought it was weird and then it happened again this week! So we do not have kind feelings toward that cat! Hopefully it improves this week

There are a few more less-active members that we have started teaching DM hasn't been to church in years, but he wants his 7 year old daughter to be baptized soon. He deals with a lot of health issues and his wife isn't exactly supportive, but he seems pretty committed to come back. He doesn't have a strong testimony so we will help him with that. Also we started teaching the Ch family. They pretty much play baseball year round. We have tried to get in contact with them so many times and we finally did. We talked baseball for a while so it was good to get a connection with them. We were talking about the Indians and their 18 year old son was like, "Yeah they were pretty good when they had Rick Vaughn!" Who would have thought watching that scene from Major League was just preparing me to make a connection with the Ch family! HaHa. We are meeting with them again so we will see what we can do. Thanks for reminding me of that story about Grandpa Hart. We never know what is going to happen by our efforts.

So it has been really smoky here, too! There have been a bunch of wildfires in the area. There have even been people wearing gas masks around! I wish I would have gotten a picture because it was pretty funny. The worst day was Saturday. It hasn't been bad enough to where we need to stay in or anything. It's just a little uncomfortable at times.

So, funny story about the guy that sent you that picture. We moved them into the Blue Lake ward to a neighborhood where I had tracted before. I remember that the only person that had any potential was their next door neighbor! So I told the people moving in to get on them! It was a cool experience.

That is a great talk to read by President Uchtdorf (On Being Genuine). I would also suggest reading Randall. Ridd's talk on real intent. It is a 2015 CES devotional and it goes along the same lines. But...it is kind of long, so get comfortable when you read it!

So it seems to me that most people are either too prideful or too hard on themselves. Most of the time, it is those who don't know their identity as a child of God. It is hard to be prideful when you know that you are subject to the creator of the universe. Every gift and strength you have has to be credited to God. On the other hand, it is hard to have a low self-esteem when you know your purpose here on earth. God has placed each of us here to reach out to those around us. We have a divine purpose here and it is to fulfill God's will and we are the only ones that can do it. Trying to find that balance is hard to do.

Thanks so much for the email. I hope everybody has a great week and I love you.

Love, Jaxon