April 15, 2013

Hello! It has been a crazy week! It has been a lot of steps for those we have been teaching! It has been a very rewarding week!

First we will start with Tyler! She has had a great week! She was able to get her patriarchal blessing last Monday and had a wonderful experience with that! We asked her afterwards if she had any doubts that God knows exactly who she is and what is happening in her life and her response was, "Not a chance!" ha-ha It was really cool! The other thing came as a shock to us! We were having a lesson with her on Wednesday and she seemed really excited the whole time and then after we said the prayer she said, "I have something to show you two." and then reached into her bag. She came out holding a little piece of paper with a temple on it. It took me a second to process what that meant! I thought oh cool it's a temple recommend and then it hit me, "Tyler is holding a temple recommend!!!!" It was so cool! That was one of the best experiences thus far on my mission! To see someone who was so lost and so miserable when we first started meeting transform into a person beaming with excitement and radiating light as she showed proof that she was ready and worthy to enter into the house of the Lord! It was the sweetest experience! She will be going soon! We are so excited for her!

The next thing is something that happened on Thursday! Now Thursday was our temple day, only happens once every 4 months and is not scheduled by us. We didn't tell anyone that we were going on Thursday and definitely not which session we were going to which happened to be the 9:45 session. Wednesday afternoon Nicole sent us a very happy text telling us that she, Salena, Josh, and Larry had all decided that they were going to the temple to do baptisms on Thursday at 9:30! Of course we were so excited! Nicole and Larry were going to the temple! OH HECK YA!! And then we realized that they would be at the temple at the same time that we would be without any planning! What a tender mercy of the Lord! It was so cool!

Thursday we were able to see the fruits of our labors as those we were privileged to teach were welcomed into the house of the Lord! It was one of the greatest feelings ever! It was such an amazing opportunity! Also the temple was fantastic! As always! That is the most peaceful place in the entire world because you feel like you leave the world and step into heaven! The Celestial room is definitely my favorite place to be! It was amazing to step away from all of the stress and everything and bask in the love of God! I love this church!

Another really cool thing is that Nicole was able to meet the patriarch yesterday and talk with him for a little while in preparation for when she has her blessing in two weeks!! Also we were privileged to be able to stand in on Larry's ordination to the Priesthood! That was such a cool experience as well! Larry has the priesthood! That is so cool! We are so happy for him!

It has been a good week! It has also been a stressful week as we had some problems with some missionaries that we had to deal with! Oh the joys of being over a good sized zone! We also trained the entire zone this week and that was a struggle! It is not a good omen when only two companionships are there on time to a zone meeting. But such is life! I look forward to the crappy parts of the mission because they usually happen right before or during the best times on the mission! Such is how it was this week! We will keep trucking along and hopefully have some more people to teach her soon. We are looking to find some new investigators now and are trying our best!

That has been the report for this week!

Elder Banner......signing off!

April 8th, 2013

General Conference was this weekend! I could end my letter right there as that in and of itself should explain how good of a week it was!

I loved Conference! I hope that all of you really appreciated the opportunity that we had this weekend. Think of how many billions of people have populated this earth since Adam and Eve. Now imagine how many prophets there were and that, up until around just a few years ago, to hear the voice of a prophet explaining the will of the Lord you would have to be in a place that you could see him or have a letter or an epistle directed to your area. If you add all of that up it is a small small percentage of choice individuals that have had the opportunity to listen to the voice of a modern prophet! We are a unique bunch! What is sad is that the majority of the earth does not even know that a prophet of the Lord spoke yesterday! The opportunity to listen is greater than ever before with the Internet and satellite broadcasting and yet there are millions upon millions of people that have no idea that there is a prophet on the earth today! Therefore it becomes our opportunity and duty to "warn every man his neighbor" and let them know the good news! These people are our friends! Our family! And our brothers and sisters! We have found the pearl of great price, the answers to the very questions that have plagued humanity since the beginning, questions such as "What is the purpose in life?" "Where did I come from?" "Where am I going?" "Is death the end?" and most importantly "How can I know?"! We have that! The answer to the last one was demonstrated this weekend in fact that we have a Prophet! Now it is our turn to share these answers with those that "are kept from the truth only because they know not where to find it." That, as President Monson stated in Priesthood session, is our watchword in this church! I encourage all of you to go and bring those you love back into the fold!

Conference really is the best thing ever on a mission! And what makes it even better is the opportunity to watch it with those you come to love! We were able to watch conference with those that we have been teaching and helping for the past 4 months! It was really cool to hear their takes on conference and what it means to them! I love the people here and appreciate their hospitality towards us! They do so much for us as missionaries and as friends! I love this area and all that implies! I am looking forward to finishing the semester here and hope that we will be able to meet and help many more people come back or join the fold! 

It was a good week for us! Transfer week is always crazy and then, on top of that, we had ZLC and conference so that our Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were filled. It was still fantastic! It was the best ZLC I have been to on Friday being that I learned more then I think I have before at one of those meetings. President Killpack trained on Priesthood keys and I learned so much that I have never thought of before! It was great! We were also able to start teaching a new investigator! His name is Will and he is also on the football team. He was at Nicole's baptism being that they are friends and he had a good experience there. He and Nicole were talking later and she invited him to come to her lessons with us! She is such a great missionary already! I wish that I was as good as her at it! Ha-ha But the lessons went well! There was a great feeling in the few lessons that we were able to have with him! Hopefully he will continue to progress as he finds the truthfulness of the things that he was taught and the spirit he felt! Some other good things are what are happening with the people we have been teaching! Tyler is going to receive her patriarchal blessing tonight!! We are so excited for her! Tashena will be receiving hers next week!! And Nicole will be getting hers before the month is finished!! It is so exciting! Larry and Nicole both were able to get their temple recommends this week and both will be attending this week for the first time! I am so excited for them! It is cool to see all of this that is happening right now! I love it! There is no greater joy then to see your friends find true happiness and fully embrace it!

That will be all for right now! We are looking forward to a good week ahead of us and hope it is the same for all of you!

Elder Banner

April 2nd, 2013

What a week!! This was one of the best weeks of my life! Oh I love this area! So this week is transfers (which are why this email is late) and...................Elder Clark and I are staying one more!! I am so excited!

That means that the two of us will finish the semester here! The other big news about transfers is that they are combining our zone with the Mount Graham Zone so our zone just became one of the biggest in the mission and we are the zone leaders over the entire Gila Valley!! It will be pretty crazy as we have some missionaries that we will probably need to work with a little bit. But it will be good! I am so excited!

It has been such a fantastic week! Again, I will not be able to talk about hardly anything because there was so much but I will talk about the most important things and the highlights of the week!

Larry and Nicole were baptized this week!!!!! They were such great experiences! Nicole's baptism was first on Saturday and was a great service! There were lots of people there and it was so cool! Salena gave a really good talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost using only her scriptures and one note card! She is practicing for when she goes on her mission. After that, Elder Clark had the opportunity to baptize Nicole and it was great! After that Elder Franzen and I spoke about the Book of Mormon while they changed! It was so cool because there were quite a few people there who are not yet on this great team, (our friends of other faiths)! It was a great experience to see how happy she was and how excited she is for everything to come! It is a really cool feeling to see someone who has become one of your best friends gets baptized! I have seen it a few times now and it is always amazing! Larry's baptism followed later on Saturday night! That was a good one as well and Cameron and Blaine gave some really good talks that really brought the spirit in! It was funny because Larry was so nervous and excited! It is not an emotion that we have seen with him all that often! Ha-ha It was good as he was baptized! The Spirit was so strong and it was really awesome! Afterword’s he told us, "I feel lighter and so much happier!" It is so cool!

Sunday was another good day! What an Easter! I love Easter but being out on a mission makes it so much better! The opportunity to go and teach about and remember Christ like we have the opportunity to will probably never happen again! It was so cool! We were able to have 4 Easter programs on Sunday! And we sang hymn 200 in every single one! 4 for 4! Ha-ha It was so cool! It was such a cool day! And what better time to be baptized and confirmed then on Easter weekend! It was really cool on Sunday because both Larry and Nicole were confirmed in the 4th sacrament into 1st ward! So we were able to sit through 3 sacraments and then have that opportunity! It was so cool! 

I was privileged to be able to confirm Nicole! That was such a cool experience! Being in the circle of a confirmation is really cool and really spiritual but actually being the voice was fantastic! It is funny because it was almost a year ago when I was able to confirm Danielle! This is a good time of year! Ha-ha It was a really cool feeling to give that blessing; and I don't remember anything that was said! I was hoping for that because that means that it wasn't me speaking! There was a really cool moment after church when Nicole came up to talk to me about the blessing and told me a really cool experience she had with it. I guess that she has been stressing about school recently and she was going to ask us to give her a blessing a week or so ago for help with school. She decided against it for whatever reason but was still worried about it! She said that it was a huge testimony boost to her as I was confirming her because I randomly, in the middle of the blessing, just started talking about school and how she will get help for school from the Spirit! it was so cool! I love this church! The Church is true!! I love it!

There was so much more this week; like learning the (white man) Haka from Adam, having some good lessons with Tyler, and tons of other cool stuff but that will be it for this letter!

Till after general conference!! Watch it this weekend!!

Elder Banner

March 25th, 2013

Oh it has been an interesting week! Spring break.....on campus......everyone is gone! Ha-ha But it was still a good one!

Spring break really did hurt us a bit. We went from teaching about 4 lessons a day with a bunch of other stuff to scrambling to find enough to do. We had a lot of energy and not enough to use it for which made for an interesting week! Ha-ha We were fine though. We were able to do a lot of service and some exchanges and everything like that! It was a good week!

For service we helped Bro. Sorenson (who is the dean of students here at EA) with a few things. We were able to re varnish his fence(s) which was pretty fun! It was good to be out in the 90 degree weather with a tee shirt on! We were also able to help him put some lattice over his patio! It was a great thing for me to be able to really do work like that again! It has been since before my mission that I was able to work and build things like that and I really miss it a lot! It was good to be able to work with tools again! I was able to really help a lot and I feel a little bad because I kind of took over and started telling everyone what to do. In my defense......I do know what I am doing and I saved us a few trips to the store as well as extra pieces of lattice! It was good! I will send pics next week. 

I don't have much to report on the people we are teaching because every single one of them was gone this week! But Nicole is doing really well! She made it back safely and we are looking forward to her baptism this Saturday! I am so excited! Larry was able to have a good week back with his family in Louisiana! He is doing well and if everything happens as it should we should be seeing him in a white jumpsuit as well! Ale we have not heard from since she left, hopefully she was able to have a good week in Mesa with her family. Tyler is doing pretty well. Her family is having some trials this weekend that are really hard for her but we are keeping her in our prayers and everything will work out.

One really interesting experience that happened this week involves a really cool example of the enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I was able to have a unique experience this week with the Enabling Power that changed my perspective on it a little bit and made it even more personal. It all started on Monday when I threw out my back. I am not sure when it happened and I don't remember throwing it out but it must have happened when we were playing sports with the missionaries or when we went and played sports with the college kids. Anyways Monday night it hurt. No big deal. Sleep it off and in the morning it will be better right? Wrong. When I woke up Tuesday morning I couldn't get up. I couldn't even sit up because my back was not cooperating. Weird feeling for me......I'm not that old right? Ha-ha But I couldn't do it. I just laid there as Elder Clark went to shower and get ready. As I was laying there I was pondering my options to think of what to do. I kept having the thought that I should just pray for strength and I would be alright. I decided to do it. I maneuvered myself to my knees (probably took a few minutes) and began to pray. I prayed that I would have the strength in my back to accomplish all that I needed to do that day, that through the enabling power of the Atonement I could receive strength in my back. 

There was no immediate change as I finished. It took me a lot of struggling but I was able to stand up. I was able to stagger/waddle to the kitchen with the help of the walls. But it worked! The enabling power of the Atonement can work. Though the pain was not gone and I didn't walk like normal, though I had to struggle all day. I was able to do it! I had the strength sufficient to accomplish everything I needed to and that night, after writing in my journal I could discern when that power stopped supporting me as I had to really struggle to get back into bed. I am not upset that I had to deal with the pain or struggle with the things I needed to do that day. I am super grateful for my opportunity to have this amazing experience with the Atonement. This experience repeated itself on Wednesday as well. Almost to the t. I couldn't get up until I asked for help. I was pretty much literally carried and supported throughout all the things I needed to do and my strength didn't fail until I went to bed. My back is all better now and completely back to normal but that experience I had this week was priceless. It isn't very often that we are able to be carried in a way such as that by our Savior. He has carried all of our burdens before and will gladly help us and lift us if we ask. In His words, "Come unto me, all ye that labor. And I will give you rest. For my burden is easy and my yoke is light." It is true! He will literally lift us through all of our struggles! 

That is all I have for this week! Next week will be a good one!

Till next time.....

Elder Banner......signing off.....

March 18th, 2013

I think I am beginning to sound like a broken record but it was another great week and I have way too many things to write about!

I will start out with someone new that we started teaching this week. Her name is Ale (Allie) and she is an inactive member of the church that hasn't gone for a very long time. Her friend is one of our ward missionaries and invited her to have a lesson with us! It was an interesting but very good experience as we were able to teach her about prayer and then the next lesson about the Atonement. She now wants to come back as she felt the spirit for the first time in months. It was a great experience! She is in Mesa for this week with her family.

Things are going well with Larry! He is awesome and continuing to progress! We had a good week where we were able to meet with him frequently. He was able to come to home evening at bishops on Monday and had a good experience there. We were able to watch Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration with him and that was also a great experience. He had to get surgery on his ear this week because of a bad ear infection so that was interesting. He is fine and he is actually able to go home to Louisiana this week to spend spring break with his family! He hasn't seen them for about 8-9 months so it will be great for him!

Nicole is continuing to progress and she is so awesome! She had here baptism interview on Tuesday and of course was ready! She is so ready! We were also able to have a few good lessons with her this week before she left on Thursday! It was cool as we were talking about faith in Jesus Christ and she said how much her faith has grown since we started meeting with her. She believed in Christ before as she was Catholic but it was cool to see how much more she knows now! She will be gone until probably Saturday or so we won’t be able to teach her much this week but we were able to get her baptism all scheduled and it will be a great program! I am so excited!

We were able to have Zone training this week with President and Sister Killpack and it was great! They told us that ours was the most fun and happiest zone training in the mission! We do have a.........interesting group of missionaries here! I love them! They are a lot of fun! Good group of guys here. We had an interesting experience with a Lutheran guy that just tried to bash with us for about 20 minutes. It was sad. His religion and the things he thinks he knows are so backwards and don't make sense. We didn't tell him that of course but it was sad to see how unhappy he was and how he tried to feel better by tearing us down. We were able to answer all of his questions and I think he left madder because he couldn't tear us down. Bashing is awful. It makes everyone angry! Also I had a crazy experience/miracle involving two cars and my leg. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances my left leg was pinned between two cars this week. Yes I have now been hit by a car on my mission. The miracle is that I didn't even have a bruise! It hurt so badly and my leg probably should have broken but I was protected and I didn't even have a bruise to prove it happened! Only a limp! Ha-ha

The best experience this last week has been with Tyler. I didn't have time to write about this last week but Last Saturday we had a lesson with her about weapons of rebellion against God. Basically anything that is keeping us from Him and the Spirit. We had her write on a paper that only she would see all of the things that are keeping her from feeling the Spirit and then we committed her to refrain from all of those things for a week. She did it and the change in her this week is amazing! It is a complete 180 and night/day difference! She had the best week of her life! That is how she described it! She was so happy this week! Everything went right for her this week and she came to the conclusion that it was so because of her sacrifice and submission to God's will. She described her change with tons of examples. I will share one that highlights a scripture that we told her about before we started this process. Tyler loves music! It is her favorite thing in the world. Her music is...hard music and not very conducive to the spirit. She has a lot of concert t-shirts and that is mostly what she would wear and most of what her closet is full of. All of these are black. One of the craziest things is that she doesn't want to wear black anymore! She only wants to wear light colors because she is happy! She has also stopped listening to most of her music because "it is garbage and nasty and I don't feel good when I listen to it". The Atonement is real! This change that Tyler has gone through is described in D&C 88:67-68 "And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things. Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God." This sanctification and enlightening process has been the theme of my time up here in Thatcher! I love the Atonement! I love being able to see it working in my life as well as those who we work with! It is the coolest thing in the world!

Though there were many more experiences this week that will conclude my email! I hope all is going well with all of you!

Elder Banner