June 30, 2014

Hello Family!!! It is almost 1 o clock here so I'm sorry that this is coming in so late! This is Elder Wardell's last preparation day and so he told me that he wanted to sleep in till he woke up naturally. So I let him. I got up around 7:30 and read some scriptures and PMG and other random books. I have actually learned to love reading!! I love church history books and things about Joseph Smith and books on random topics like prayer and faith. But I think that I love the Book of Mormon the best! It always has something new about it. I will re-read a chapter like 3 times and get something different out of it every time! It is pretty much a magic book for coming closer to the Lord. I haven't had a chance to read "Everyday Missionaries" yet but I really want to. Everyone says that it is fantastic. I've also been told the "The Infinite Atonement" is a really good book too. The best part about being a missionary is I get to not only read these books but sometimes I can use them in my teaching and help other people learn cool new things.

Do they like the new house? Maybe you could send me some pictures of the house? :) I am super excited to be coming into a new house but I can't help but think that everything is going to be different when I get home. I mean maybe that will be a good thing but I am going to miss the Jones family and the Dorton's and the Peck's and pretty much everyone else. But maybe I will know some people from school or something in the new ward. I guess we'll find out in 11 months! I am almost into single digits for months left out here! CRAZY!!!!

The high-lights of my week aren't very amazing but I had a great week! We went on exchanges with our district leader this week. I was with his companion, Elder Cowdell. He is from Alpine and says that he might know Tanner Galloway. I don't know his first name unfortunately but he's a pretty cool cat. He doesn't like to talk very much at all actually but once you get him comfortable, he loves to talk! Anyway, as we were walking around, we passed a yard sale that one of his members was hosting. I saw some Protein and it was only $5 when normally it would be $25 or more! So I went over to pay for it and they told me just to take it for free. I tried to give them my $5 bill but they wouldn't take it! Elder Cowdell got one for free too! As we were leaving, I found a board game called "Who Wants to be a Celestial Heir"! It was only a dollar and so I picked it up and threw my dollar onto the table and told them I wasn't going to take it back then ran off so they couldn't argue about it. It is a really simple game. It is just like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" but it's all gospel questions about the Book of Mormon and Bible. They are super simple but they have some pretty cool questions that I had no idea the Book of Mormon or Bible talked about.

We had 2 earthquakes on Saturday!! But guess who was asleep when they hit... ME!!! This was the first earthquake in almost 50 years and Elder Wardell and I were already asleep so we didn't feel it! The first was hit around 10 p.m. and it was a 5.something. The next one was around 1 or 3 a.m. and it was a 3.2 or something like that. Anyway, we are fine but I am kinda sad that I missed it! I guess I can say I've slept through an earthquake though. Lame... :P

Our new mission president came in today! His name is President Passey. I don't know really anything about him to be honest. We get to meet him on Thursday. President Killpack texted everyone and told us that the Passey's got here safely and that he loved them already. I am kinda nervous about it though. A new president means new rules and guidelines and new ways of teaching. How many mission presidents did you have on your mission dad? Just one?

Other random subject, the U.S. is still in it! I think that we play tomorrow, right? We have a member who texts us all the scores and such for all the games. I heard that Greece lost to Costa Rica in a PK Shootout, the Netherlands won too, and today France won. These are all pretty good teams. I am really nervous for what is going to happen in these next couple of games! I guess I shouldn't be too worried cause it has absolutely no effect on me, but it's kinda cool to think about how the whole world comes together for these games.

We have the Baptism this Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. I am super excited for Aaron Tohtsoni. He is part Navajo and pact Apache. At church yesterday, he told everyone about how excited he is to get baptized!! Shoot, I have to talk tomorrow about Baptism and the Holy Ghost. Dad, thank you for sending me some polished rocks. I am going to use the rock analogy and totally blow everyone's minds! ;)

Speaking of talks, I gave 2 talks yesterday. I talked first in the Fort Thomas ward. I chose to talk on Prayer and how we make our prayers more meaningful. There is a quote from the book "Drawing on the Powers of Heaven" by Grant Von Harrison that says "If your mind is not preoccupied with the thing you are trying to achieve, it is not a desire." This reminded me of the scripture in Alma 34:27 that talks about how when you aren't crying out loud to the Lord that we need to be praying in our hearts continually. Alma 6:6 talks about "mighty prayer" and I questioned how we can make our prayers more mighty. In a talk titled "Improving Communication with out Heavenly Father" by President Ezra Taft Benson, he mentions 5 things that we can do each day to make our prayers more meaningful.

1. We should pray frequently. We should be alone with our Heavenly Father at least 2 or 3 times a day.

2. We should find an appropriate place where we can meditate and pray. In other words, it should be a place free from distractions.

3. We should prepare ourselves for prayer. If we don't feel like praying, we should pray until we do feel like praying.

4. Our prayers should be meaningful and pertinent. Don't repeat the same thing in each prayer. Each of us would become disturbed if a friend said the same few words to us each day, treated the conversation as a chore, and could hardly wait to finish in order to turn on the TV or go back to sleep.

5. After making a request through prayer, we have a responsibility to assist in its being granted. We should listen. Perhaps while we are on our knees, the Lord wants to counsel us. "Sincere praying implies that when we ask for any virtue or blessing, we should work for the blessing and cultivate the virtue." (David O. McKay.)

The Bible Dictionary says that prayer is a form of work. If we aren't taking the time before we pray to prepare ourselves, if we aren't praying with real intent, if we don't act on the answers or impressions we get when we pray, then "...our prayers will be in vain..." (Alma 34:28.)

In Pima 4th ward, Elder Wardell and I were both asked to talk about how we are committed to our testimonies as full time missionaries. I talked about how the mission has been the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I've never felt so discouraged before. Commitment literally means, according to Webster's dictionary "to carry into action". So I gave 5 examples of people that were committed to their testimonies and the end result of them staying strong in what they believed. The first was Nephi. Because he stayed strong, they were able to get the brass plates, travel across the sea, and his sea gave us the Book of Mormon. The 2nd was Abinadi. He spoke out against Noah and because of that, we have Alma converted and he had sons that converted thousands and their sons converted thousands and so on. 3rd as the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's. They made the covenant to not take up arms again and because of that, thousands were killed. But because they stood strong, there were more people converted to the Lord than had died. 4th was Joseph Smith. He was tarred and feathered and beaten and thrown in jail and eventually killed for his beliefs. But he never doubted his testimony and now there are 15 million members that are apart of the true church. And the most perfect example is Jesus Christ. He sacrificed everything for us, even his life. Because he allowed himself to go though everything he did, we now have the opportunity to be with our families forever, to repent of our sins, and the list goes on and on. My mission is hard but compared to what these people had to go through, being a missionary isn't hard at all. Neither is being a teacher for primary or a relief society president or even a deacon. By staying committed to what we believe, even though we may not see the blessings that come from us living our testimonies, there will always be someone that will be uplifted because of our actions and the church will grow because of it.

I love this church. Everything makes so much sense! I love you guys all so much too. I hope and pray that everything is going great for you guys and that you can finish up packing soon. I love you.

~Elder Kyle Harris

p.s. Happy late anniversary mom and dad!!! and Happy early anniversary Syd and Dave!!!

p.p.s. Transfers are next week. I will email you guys on Tuesday. kk? :)

June 23, 2014

Hello Family! I can't believe its Monday already! From what your emails have sounded like, our new ward must be pretty cool! We didn't do those fun activities for scouts or young men. We had a few fun trips for like youth conference. I remember that we went boating twice out at Starvation Res. Man, that seems like it was forever ago! Good memories. GAVIN: How was your scout camp? Do you like the new ward? Are the young men nice? It sounded like a blast so I hope you weren't too home sick. Go on lots of camp outs before you come on your mission, it will teach you how to not be home sick. :) CONNOR: I know you wont get this until you get home from scout camp but how was it? Do you like the ward too?

This week we went on exchanges with Elders Hearn and Heiner. Elder Heiner goes home with Elder Wardell and they wanted to be comps for the day and our district leader approved it. So they drove in from Gila, New Mexico and then I drove back out there with Elder Hearn. He is great! I don't remember very much about him except that we have a lot of the same interests. We both like sports and listened to the same kind of music back home. He goes home in about 9 months or so. I know that I have been East of Utah but I never really had a choice about it. I just always tagged along. Well for the first time, I can say that I finally went east of Utah on my own! Haha I know it's kinda lame to say but I haven't really traveled anywhere but north and west. Well not anymore! ;) Gila, New Mexico is tiny. I thought that Pima was small but at least I can see other peoples houses when I go out my front door. Gila has one church building that is about the size of the gym of our old church there next to the high school. It is really small. There are no stores for 30 miles in any direction and no gas stations for 15 miles in any direction. It was great to see a new area and get to know new people but it really made me appreciate all those months that I was on a bike. We spent easily over 3 hours in the car going to appointments and that isn't counting the 3 hours to get to Gila and back to Pima. But it was great. I loved Elder Hearn! He isn't the best example but he is really easy to get along with. All of the missionaries that are going home at the end of the transfer get to go to the Temple one last time before they go home. So Elder Heiner and Elder Hearn are coming back out here so that Elder Heiner can go to the Temple. That means that I get to be with Elder Hearn again on Tuesday! :)

Elder Wardell got sick the day after exchanges so we stayed in all that day. He just had the 24 hour bug so he is feeling better now but it was hard to see him in pain and I couldn't do anything to help him out. He stayed in bed most of the day except for when he showered and when he came in to try and get some food in his stomach. I studied and slept for a little bit. Elder Wardell has an electric keyboard that he plays on every so often. He is teaching himself how to play and has memorized a hymn or 2. So I decided I should give it a try. I have now learned how to slowly read music and play both the top hand and the bottom hand! Like I said, it is very slow and takes me about three times as long to get through the song but I am learning! :)

This week was President Killpacks final Zone Conference in the Gila Valley. He is such a great mission president. I am really going to miss him and sister Killpack. They have really helped me realize my true potential to be the missionary the Lord knows I can be and I am striving harder than ever to get there. I know I won't be perfect, and trust me, I haven't been, but I am trying and that is what the Lord asks of me. The hardest part for me is getting up on time. Elder Wardell doesn't usually get up till around 9 or even 10, sometimes later. And I don't usually sleep in past 8 but like I said, I'm not perfect. President Killpack says that the morning schedule will either make or break your mission. And I can see the way that it has made my mission better! I’m not saying that I am glad that I sleep in sometimes cause I don't like the fact that I do it. But I don't have the motivation to get up by myself. We have 5 alarms that go off at 6:30 and some of them aren't even in our bedroom! Plus we have a daily challenge from the Zone Leaders to do every morning and the winner of the week gets a prize. We get up and turn off all the alarms and do the challenge but then somehow we end up back in bed. Well I know how, we walk there, but Elder Wardell wont stay up. I go in and turn the light on and ask him if he's going to get in the shower and do that multiple times. But until he's ready to get up, he won't unless he has to. So this week I am going to try and set some appointments for like 9 or 8 in the morning so that he has to get up and maybe that will help him for the last 2 weeks of his mission or so. Don't get me wrong, I love Elder Wardell! He is one of my favorite companions I've had out here. But no one is perfect and everyone has their own battles to work through.

This week we have been talking about Alma 6:6 and relating it the talk given by Elder S. Gifford Nielson called "Hastening the Lord's Game Plan!". You can re-read it here - <https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/hastening-the-lords-game-plan?lang=eng> I really liked this talk! In the talk, he asks the Members to pray for 3 things. 1) Pray for the missionaries by name (that includes me and the missionaries in the ward you are in too). 2) Pray for my investigators and the investigators in the ward you are in now too. If you will pray for Aaron Totsoni that would be awesome! I will tell you about him in a second. 3) Pray for missionary opportunities of your own. I realized something though as I was reading Alma 6:6. Alma talks about "mighty prayer". So what makes a prayer mighty...? I think it has to do with the intents of your heart. You can pray for all these things but if you don't have real intent to do them, it doesn't matter what you pray for. Real intent and having the Spirit are the two most important things you can have during a prayer. I've learned that before I pray, if I take like a minute or two to clear my mind, my prayers are more meaningful and I get more out of them and put more into them too!

Now about Aaron Totsoni. Aaron is 22 and absolutely Golden! I have talked about him in past emails. I remember telling you guys that we were teaching him and that he wanted to get baptized! Well the only problem is that he lives in San Carlos, AZ. San Carlos is not only out of our area, it is out of our mission... So President Killpack said that we needed to pass him off to the Elders serving in San Carlos but that we could keep teaching him until they took over. That means that he cant get baptized down here. Well, we told his fellow shipper who just so happens to be the ward Mission Leaders wife. Her and Aaron were great friends before he started taking the lessons and she wanted him to get baptized. So she called President Killpack yesterday. She explained the situation more clearly to President. Aaron lives alone, his parents kicked him out. He drives the 2 hours or so every week to come to church with her. The person he wants to baptize him lives in the ward too. And lastly, he is moving up to Mesa in like 3 weeks for school so San Carlos is only a temporary place for him to live. We got a call from President Killpack and he said, "Elders, because of Aarons situation, you have my permission to baptize him in there in Pima. Keep up the good work Elders!" AARON IS GETTING BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!! The baptism date is set for the 1st of July. It's not a Saturday but it fits best with his schedule and the person he wants to baptize him! Elder Wardell is super excited too cause he has been teaching him from the first lesson. What a great way to end his mission!

Well that about sums up this week. Oh! Connor: Remember how you told me that USA wasn't going anywhere in this world cup? Well, you were wrong!!! Here is what needs to happen for USA to move on to the next round. We either need to win or tie against Germany. If we lose to Germany, then Portugal would have to beat Ghana and our point differential would have to be higher than Portugal's. Portugal is at a -4 point differential and USA is at +1. So we just have to stay above them in that way and we will move on! I can't believe that I am missing everything! They play on Thursday and so you guys better watch it for me cause I can't! If you can, try to go to the Jones's and watch it there cause that where I would be watching if I was home. You can just go there for me! ;)

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! Remember to say your prayers and study your scriptures, including PMG! I love you. <3

~Elder Kyle Harris

June 16, 2014

Hello Everyone!! This email may not be very long this week but I will do my best to extend all my stories out a little longer so it looks just as long. :P Each day this week flew by but the week itself went by really slow. Looking back at last Tuesday and Wednesday seems like it has been forever ago! But maybe that's just cause I have been trying to focus on each day instead of the week in its entirety. However, only like 3 cool things happened this week. Let me tell you about my week and then we will see what happens from there.

This last Tuesday I went on exchanges with my district leader, Elder Zeegan George. He is from Sandy Utah as well. I didn't learn a whole lot about his family or what he likes to do but right now, he loves the mission and has put his home life on hold completely. It's really cool to hear about the changes he has been able to make out here cause then it allows me the time and chance as well to reflect on the changes I've been able to make. We saw SOO many miracles that day! Here are just a few of them:

As we were planning Tuesday morning to see which families in the Pima 1st ward we should visit, we chose 6 families and then decided we should pray and ask if there was anyone else we should add to the list. When we finished the prayer, he had the feeling that we should put another one on there and a name came to my mind. It was the Peterson Family. We had been told to go see them last week but they don't have a phone number and we couldn't find their house. So we put them on the list and headed out for the day. We saw a few families and had some great experiences! Then we went looking for a brother Milsap. But we got a little lost... we ended up going down some dirt road about half a mile and it ended at 2 houses, a brown one and a white one. We decided we should knock on them but couldn't decide which one. Elder George kept looking at the brown one and said that we should go to that one. But I looked at the white one and said that we should knock the white one first and then the brown one if we needed to. He said, "It's your area." and followed me to the door. We knocked and a man answered the door with a friendly "Hello Elders! Come on inside!" We introduced ourselves and he said "I'm Brother Peterson. Welcome to our home." THIS WAS THE SAME PETERSON FAMILY THAT WE HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR LAST WEEK AND PLANNED TO SEE TODAY!!!! Oh it was so cool to see the Lord's hand like that! She has been diagnosed with breast cancer and it has been really tough for them to deal with. She goes through radiation this week then Kimo next week. They said they really needed us to come over and share message with them. So that was really cool!!

We then went out to Bylas again, that is the Apache Indian Reservation. First we saw Leon. He told us he had read the Restoration Pamphlet and believed it! After telling us what the Apache's believed, we realized how close it was to what we believe! He told us about the Holy Ghost and how it works and feels, but he explained it like a hummingbird. We told him about the Book of Mormon and he told us he would read and pray about it! We challenged him to Baptism and he accepted a date of June 28th. Elder George set that date and it wasn't till we got home that night that we realized it was impossible for him to keep. The rule in the mission is you have to go to church 3 times at least. With the date, he would only have the opportunity to go twice... So we are going out there tomorrow to reset it and help him make arrangements to go to church.

We then went over to Joey's who is a potential we have. Long story short, he wasn't home. But his mom was! She told us she used to be Lutheran but wasn't anymore cause there wasn't a church out in Bylas that she believed in. So we asked her what she believed in and told he that we believed all that and more. She was just leaving right then but asked for a Book of Mormon and then asked us to come back and talk to her more about what we believe! So both Leon and Joey's mom were miracles to me!

This week, I hit a year!! We treated it as a normal day until that night when we got home! We had ice cream and we were going to make a cake but I don't have a pan or eggs so I'll make it today instead. :) BUT I BURNED MY SHIRT!!! I am going to try to put it onto a google doc's from kyle.myfastpc@gmail.com but we will see if I can get into it first. :P If that doesn't work then I will put it into a drop-box account and see if I can get that to work. But it was insane! We bought a bottle of lighter fluid and took the shirt out to the middle of our property where there is just rocks and dirt. We took a short stick and taped it to a bigger on to make a "t" then got it to stand up with rocks holding it up. We hung the shirt on and lit it up! We used the entire bottle of lighter fluid on it... :) The flame was HUGE for about 3 seconds before it melted the tape and the shirt fell down but continued to burn. It was probably like 15 or 20 feet high and the heat was super intense and we were like 20 feet away from it. The video is super cool and hopefully I can get it to start working!

And of course, it was Fathers day yesterday. Dad, Happy Fathers day! I love you so much! We were talking about memories we had with our dads yesterday and I had a lot come to mind. I've talked about them in past emails but I want to remind you cause I know how your memory is starting to fade now-a-days. ;) Remember that Thanksgiving where it was just me and you? You didn't want Turkey, you wanted Ham! But we didn't have anything else to go with it so instead of making potatoes or green beans, we had ham, a banana, pickles, popcorn, and diet coke! We had our meat, fruits, and vegies in it (popcorn is made from corn which is a vegie, right?)... I also remember you taking me to St. Johns with you for the 24th of July Celebration. I remember the ride down there was super squished cause I sat in the middle in the back taking up everyone's leg and arm room. That was such a great trip! I remember going on the Fathers and Sons campout and sleeping in the bed of the truck on an air mattress but there was a hole it in so it was super uncomfortable... :P But you were always the life of Fathers and Sons and made it fun for all the guys there, even the older ones. Of course there was clear creek! As a 5th grader, I got special treatment when it came to my pot gut trap! We used peanut butter back then which works a WHOLE lot better than those seeds. Plus it fattens us the potguts and makes the kids feel better knowing they caught one that was like 5 lbs instead of like 1 lb. I got to use peanut butter AND a special blend of seed that no other kid had! I wish I had more time to go over all my memories but I just want to say, I love you dad. Thank you for always putting up with me and always being the best example to me!

I sent home a package this week. It should get there today. Inside is something for everyone including Syd and Dave. I also have a new suit in there and my box of mission memories that I want to keep safe there at home. Feel free to go through it! Most of them are just letters and you can go through them if you have to but if you don't, that would be best (just some secrets that my friends don't want me to put out for the whole world to know). Well, I think that is about everything! The heat lost this week to the Spurs and so the Spurs are the new NBA Champions! GO SPURS!! ;) Also, the U.S. plays in their world cup game today. Let me know how it is if you watch it. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!

~Elder Kyle Harris

June 9, 2014

Wow.... I mean Hello everyone! But wow... That was very surprising to me. Moving... Weird! I don't really know what to think. I mean I always wanted to move around just for kicks and giggles but it is going to be so weird coming home to a new ward and not knowing very many people. How do the boys feel about it? I know it will be a good move, it just kinda caught me off guard. I was so confused when dad said that I would never get to know our new stake president because he is moving. I didn't even finish his email until I read moms because I wanted to know what you were talking about. I mean, wow. This will be a good change I think though. The only absolute thing in life is change so why try to run from it? I am happy that you guys are excited but you might need to cry some tears for me because I don't have time to cry out here. :P

3 days... I hit a year in 3 days!!!!!! I don't even know what to do to celebrate... I will be burning a shirt for sure! It's just missionary tradition. But a previous elder left a shirt in the trailer so that is the one I will be burning, not one of my own. :) Also, we live next to some goats and there is a small one that always gets his head stuck in the fence. It is just wide enough for him to get his head and horns through but it is like the pot-gut traps: When the door swings closed, the door hits against the hook. But because of the curvature of the hook, the door is able to push it down slightly and get past it. This is what happens with the goats horns. It is able to push against the fence and because of the curvature of his horns, it moves the fence till his head gets past but then he can't get his head out! I go out at lease twice a day or sometimes more and get his head un-stuck. Well he is in one pen but there is another one right next to it that has a smaller fence so he can't get his head stuck in it and there are more weeds in there that he can eat which will save our bishop some hay so he doesn't have to feed that goat. So he asked us to go throw him over the fence and get him in the other pen. That is something we are going to do on my birthday just so I can say I celebrated somehow... :P

I emailed a picture of my pants and new suit coat to missionary mall cause they were completely different colors due to the sun bleaching them. Missionary mall said that they would love to replace them. That was about 2 weeks ago. I got the package on Saturday and opened it up. Along with 2 new pairs of suit pants, I got a new suit coat and an awesome bluish-whitish tie! There was also a letter that basically said they were sorry for the time it took to get me my new pants and to make it up to me they sent me a new suit coat and a new tie! I think that totally makes up for time I had to wait... :P I completely forgot about the pants until I got the package but that is customer service! I really like missionary mall. :) 

So last Monday night, Elder Wardell and I went scorpion hunting. We didn't find much except for this short, fat stick. We had turned over everything else to find some scorpions so Elder Wardell got down to flip this stick over. But the weird thing was the ground under it was wet and there was juices coming out of the stick. Elder Wardell stepped on it and more juices came out! As we stepped back and took a good look at it, it wasn't a stick.... It was a pigs leg.... and just 5 feet away was another one.... We both started to get a little freaked out and so we ran back inside and just stayed in the rest of the night. Well the next night we went walking around the property again and saw a pile of something in the middle of the property. Monday we just stayed around the edge of the property but Tuesday we went venturing into the middle. As we approached this pile, it started to smell really bad. Sure enough, it was the rest of the pig!! We called the bishop (it is his property that we are staying on) and told him what we found and were kinda freaking out a little bit. He just laughed as we told him and then explained that he was the one that had killed the pig for a ward camp out the week previous and had just forgotten to bury the pig. That was comforting! But we both decided that we never wanted to be on like CSI or BONES cause we don't want to find a dead body. It would just smell too bad and freak us out too much! Also on Tuesday we found a HUGE scorpion!!! Well huge as in like 2 inches when he has his tail spread out. But he is at least twice the size of any of the other scorpions we've sound so we needed a cool name for him. After trying some names, my eyes lit up as I said, "MUFASA!!!" It was settled, Mufasa it was. We eventually let Lawrence the Spider go about a mile away from our house but kept the scorpions in the container. We had to go to the church for like an hour on Saturday and when we came out, the scorpions are all dead... But I got the great idea to do one of the ice cube things from clear creek to one of them! Do you think it would work?? I think it would be SOOO cool!

We have really been struggling to find people to teach... We have been given lots of names from the people we eat dinner with but they are either active members or less-active members. I mean missionary work is missionary work whether it is to non-members or less-active members. So we've been visiting lots of them but most of them just turn us away nicely anyways. Well on Saturday, Elder Netane (one of our Zone Leaders) and Elder Blyel (One of our Assistants to the President) said they were going to come blitz our area. They were on exchanges for the day and decided we needed the most help, and we do. Elder Netane asked if we could go out to Bylas which is about 45 minutes North-West of us. It is in our area but it is really far away so we don't go out there very often. I had never been out there myself so I was totally up for it. Turns out, Bylas is an Apache Indian Reservation. So we drive out there and I am put with Elder Netane and Elder Wardell is with Elder Blyel. Neither Elder Netane nor I have been to Bylas before so we decide we are going to kill it out there and go crazy with finding! We drive around till we feel like we should turn. The first house we knock, we are invited inside and talk with him for about 20 minutes. His name is James and told us he is an alcoholic but wants to stop drinking. We told him that we could do our best to help him but the real Person that will help him the most is Jesus Christ. He stood up and walked over to a closet and pulled something out. It was a cross that was made out of purple yarn with a white yarn for the border. It is actually really nice. After Elder Netane looked at it, he handed it to me then I handed it back to James. He shook it head and told me to keep it! So I have a purple cross now and that is our first new investigator! :)

The next few houses told us to come back on Tuesday so we will be going back there around then. We drove further down the road and turned again but both of us lost the Spirit as soon as we saw 6 big guys with beers in their hands staring us down from the porch. We turned around and drove off both just laughing about how messed up they would be if we got into a fight! Elder Netane is from Tonga and so he is a big guy but he's a big teddy bear! That is, until he gets mad, I wouldn't want to see him when he gets mad... :P We found a neighborhood and decided to knock some more doors. But this part of town was super sketchy... We parked the car and grabbed some copies of the Book of Mormon and some pamphlets and headed off. The first door we knocked here was to an old, rickety trailer but no one answered. As we walked away, we saw the cooler in their window that was being held up by a pile of junk. This is what we saw: on the ground was the hitch that you would hook up to a truck. On top of that hitch was a table turned on it's top. There was board on top of that to make a flat surface then a piece of wood lying on top of the board. Next was a cage with a rock in it and finally a brick. On top of the brick was the cooler. Talk about ghetto! We walked to the next house and it was smaller than any house I'd seen before. It was just a one room shack really. It was just a frame of a house with some flat boards nailed to the 2x4's to make walls with more flat boards just laid on top for the roof. It was kind of sad to see actually. Anyways, we met this guy named Leo and his nephew Joey. Leo wasn't interested but Joey was very touched with what we had to say. He has been married for 8 months and has a kid. He too is an alcoholic but wants to be better because it is ruining his relationship with his wife. As we talked with him, he started to cry and asked us to come back and tell him more about our church and what we believed. We will be going back on Tuesday! That is our second investigator!!

We talked to a few more people out there but they were all drunk and not interested in what we had to say. Elder Wardell and Elder Blyel talked to a bunch of drunk people too. And I think the reason why they are all drunk is because they are actually paid to live on the reservation, which means they don't have to have a job. So they get bored of doing the same things every day and alcohol gives them a way to make life interesting. But its kinda funny because there is no alcohol allowed on the reservation! So they are all doing this illegally but I don't think the cops really care too much. :P

Sunday was good. They talked about girls camp in all 3 of our church meetings cause it was a stake girls camp. I think it is every year though so that's not very surprising. We had 2 ward councils to go to so we were in meetings from 7-4 with about an hour total of driving time to get to the meetings. So this is what it is like to be in the bishop brick huh? ;) Just kidding, well kinda. I don't think I would like to be there for that long every Sunday and away from my family for that long. Luckily, I don't have to worry about that! OH DAD: Do you remember a man by the name of Evan Neilson from when you were a boy? There was a farewell in one of the sacrament meetings and when we went to shake the new elder's hand, he asked us where we were from. I said Lehi, Utah and a man jumped in and said that he lived in Lehi about 30 years ago. We got to talking and he said that Grandma and Grandpa Harris used to ask him to come over and Baby-Sit for them! So I think I met one of your Baby Sitters! Weird huh??

Well I think that about sums up everything from this week. I just realized this is a super long email and it only took me about 45 minutes to write it! :) Well I love you all so much!! Thank you for your prayers and for being the greatest family I could ever ask for!!!

~Elder Harris