April 23rd, 2012

Hello everyone,

Yesterday we officially hit triple digits temperature wise, it was 103 degrees! In April! I was dying! Ha-ha Guess what I heard from everyone, "oh you just wait, this is nothing yet!" I am in trouble! Ha-ha

Other than me being a baby and not quite adjusting to the heat yet it has been pretty good! I guess that is a lie though, I have adjusted to the heat. If it is below about 65 degrees, I think it is cold now! Ha-ha. It was another slow week but some really good things came out of it! First, by the next email I will be able to send some baptism pictures!! Danielle is so excited for Saturday, as are we! It will be such a great experience for her; she is so ready for everything! We continue to meet with her and teach her, but for now we are just waiting for Saturday! She asked Elder Bradley to baptize her and for me to confirm her! I am kind of nervous but I am really excited!

We found our lost investigator Daniel, he showed up to church on Sunday! Apparently he didn't pay his cell phone bills so they shut it off, we were just glad that he was still happy to meet with us! Progress is very slow with him. Though he is good at languages, and knows 4, he actually is Low Ed and doesn't understand a lot. We are continuing to teach him but it will be a while before he understands enough to be baptized. It would help if we could meet with him more than once a week.

On Thursday we did exchanges again, but this time I stayed in our area and Elder Bradley left. It was a good experience; I was basically on my own when talking to the deaf.  Elder Bowen was my companion at the time and does not know any sign but I think everything went ok! Elder Bowen actually had a referral for us so we went and found that apartment.  At the apartment there are two deaf people living there. They are both extremely nice and talked to me for like 15 minutes! It is actually a good potential, they said to come back this week and hopefully we can catch them home!

The work is slow in the deaf branch but work is getting done. We are starting to see some progress in our branch and our member’s activity is starting to increase! Hopefully we can continue this upward trend! Thanks for the support and your letters!

I love you all!

Elder Banner

April 16th, 2012

Hello everyone,

This email is going to be shorter because I am only writing about things that happened since Wednesday, and it has been kind of slow.

Danielle is still working towards baptism and we are now planning the time of day and figuring out who will speak and all of that good stuff! We love her; she is awesome and so solid! Our other investigator Daniel must have gone to Mexico or something because we have been unable to contact him since last Monday, hopefully we are able to see him tomorrow.

On Friday night we had the first branch activity since I have been here! It was great! It was a night of silliness!! We played a bunch of silly games and everyone dressed up really weird and it was a lot of fun! We had 5 Less Active members show up to that one which was great! They all had a good time and they gave us permission to come visit them later. Hopefully we can bring them back and reactivate them!

On Saturday we were teaching a lesson to Danielle at the Agardy's house and right in the middle of the lesson there was an ear-shattering BOOM!! and then the entire house shook! It scared us all a bit and what it turned out to be was a jet had broken the sound barrier right above us and created a huge sonic boom that shattered a bunch of windows on the next street! It was pretty cool!

Other than that we have had some normal stuff going on. But nothing really all that special. Yesterday for church we were supposed to have High Counsel speakers come and speak in sacrament meeting but guess what, they didn't show up. That means, of course, that speaking fell to me and Elder Bradley! So we had to speak and carry the meeting with absolutely no preparation! It was great! I also had to teach Priesthood.

Anyway, I love you all and hope things are going as good with you as they are for us!

Elder Banner

April 11th, 2012

Happy Easter Everyone!! (Even though it is late.)

The reason I am writing today instead of Monday is that today we went to the Gila Valley Temple as a zone. So we changed P-Day to Wednesday for this week! This morning we woke up at 4, we then met everyone at the stake center at 5, loaded up and drove the couple hours to Gila Valley. We were then able to the Temple! The Gila Valley temple is beautiful!! It is smaller than those that I am used to, but it is beautiful and actually looks good in the desert. It has flowers all around it that are just blooming; it also has Mt. Gram in the back that has snow on it still. Yes, Arizona actually has snow in a few random spots. Anyway, it was a great experience but we just got back to Tucson now at two and I am so tired! It was my day to drive and it was a very long drive!

Like I said, Happy Easter! I hope your Easter was as good as ours!! It was definitely a very special day; not for any particular reason but church was just a lot of fun and abnormally spiritual! Now I'm not saying that the deaf branch isn't spiritual, it is different, but the spirit is always there, but on Sunday it was special! It was a good day! After that we had lunch with the Agardys and then we had a lesson with Danielle who is moving forward to her baptism with a lot of enthusiasm! She is studying the B.O.M like we wish most members would. She uses the references down in the bottom and is studying it along with the Bible and the D&C and the Pearl of Great Price. She is awesome, we love her!

After that we went up to my Uncle Nate and my Aunt Elisa's house to have Easter dinner with their family. Yes, they do live in our mission and yes President Killpack gave us permission to go. It was a great meal! We really appreciated it.  I really like going to the Banners because it reminds me of home but not enough to make me feel trunky and homesick. I missed being with you for conference and Easter. But I am having the time of my life out here! It is great!  And they had a non-member neighbor couple come over. They really seemed to like Elder Bradley's Easter message!  IT was good and we hope that they may be felt something and will look more into the church.

We also had family night with the Warren Family on Monday.  Brother Warren used to be the Deaf Branch President and Sister Warren is now the Relief Society President in the branch. Brother Warren is hearing and Sister Warren is very hard-of-hearing. I love them both! They are the sweetest people! They are so nice to everyone! We had a nice dinner with them and then I was able to give an Easter lesson for Family Night.

Most of our work lately, and probably for the next while, will be dealing with some of the less active members of our branch. We have a lot of them and they need a lot of help. That is what we do most days and we are seeing a little success from that. Some are becoming a little more active! Working in the Deaf Branch is very, very slow. I will be able to hold my own against Job in patience by the time I go home! Probably shouldn't have said that. Now the Lord is going to bless me with patience......dang.

We did a lot more this week but I am really tired and we are going to go have nap time before our lesson tonight!

So I hope all is going well! Thank you for all of your letters, prayers and continued support!  It really means a lot to me.   

With Love from the Desert,

Elder Banner

April 2, 2012

General Conference is definitely different as a missionary.

In Arizona, general conference is held at the stake center which was weird but that is how things go down here. It was very interesting to go to. We held the conference in ASL in the relief society room while the other conference was helc in the chapel and gym.  It is good that our branch could go to conference but the bad thing is that the ASL broadcast did not work when we first started! It was only shown with closed captioned which the deaf people do not like because they have a hard time understanding the English phrases. The ASL did not work on any Saturday session including priesthood.  We didn't have a lot of people come on Saturday and those that did all had iphones so they got on lds.org and watched the sessions in ASL on their iphones.  For the priesthood session, we had a lot of deaf people come so we got some interpreters to come and help.  I am glad that Elder Bradley and I did not have to interpret, we are always 'on call' for interpreting but I am glad that we didn't have to and could take notes and listen better.

Conference is awesome in Arizona at the stake centers! It is like a huge party! Everyone comes to the stake centers and brings a lot of food (for the break and after, not in the chapel). We ate so much food during those two days; it is like the Mormon super bowl for the two day event!

We ended up having Daniel (our deaf investigator) go to the stake center for conference on Sunday morning. I am going to make a bold assumption and say that the reason the ASL actually worked on Sunday is because he would not have understood the closed captions and for that reason we prayed a lot that the stupid thing would be fixed! God does hear and answer our prayers! Danielle (our other investigator) watched both sessions on Sunday with the Agardys. I loved conference! It is different being a missionary! I pulled so much out that I wouldn't have otherwise and some stuff that they didn't say but I understood things that they were hinting at! It was amazing!

Conference did confirm one thing that has been bothering me! This last week I have had some weird dreams; I normally don't have dreams so to have 4 extremely vivid dreams in 4 consecutive nights is kind of a big deal.  The weird thing was that Elder Bradley had a dream the same night one that was really similar, it even had the same people in it. When we got to Agardy's house, Sister Agardy told us about a dream she had the same night that was similar to both of ours.  We felt that the Lord is speaking to us through our dreams and is telling me a lot about myself.  I'm not going to go into detail but we all feel that something is coming. It is going to be really hard for us and will affect me, Elder Bradley and the Agardy family.  Because we are all so close it doesn't have to involve all of us, if it happens to one of us it will affect the rest. We are praying that we will have the strength to overcome it. The reason I felt that conference confirmed this for me is that in Elder Scott's talk he spoke about dreams and their importance in helping us understand the will of the Lord. President Eyring's talk was all about overcoming trials, as I watched I felt it was for us. So we'll see what happens...

On a good note, Danielle knows that this is right for her and she will set a baptismal date as soon as she tells her mom! This makes us so happy because we know that she is actually ready for baptism and she is doing it for her!

I do love it out here! I love the whole mission experience!  Hope all is well for all of you!

Elder Banner