Hummmmm Dinger

Well family,
How’s it going this week from you all? I don’t know because I haven’t heard from you in a while. But for now, know that I am safe. Everything is going great. We don’t have a baptismal date yet but we are working on it. We are close but I may not be here because transfers are coming up- I may leave this area. Till you here from me again, love you.

Temperature: ~95 degrees

Letter from the Gunther's (Sept 21, 2008)

Hi, Brother Stones!

We sure appreciate your missionary son. He's doing such good work in our area. He's currently teaching a friend of our daughter's, as well as a couple who are friends of ours. Our kids really enjoy him when he's over here teaching Casey, at Family Home Evening, or here for dinner (which the missionaries in our ward have a standing invitation for--to come any time a dinner appointment cancels or if they don't have a dinner scheduled some night.)

Here's the video I mentioned to your wife.

http://tinyurl.com/3qjmkn

I'll be mailing you a copy, but thought I'd put it here in the meantime. This link at YouTube isn't published anywhere, so a bunch of other people won't be looking at this video. The views it has so far were just me, getting the format right.

Thanks for sharing your son with our mission! He's a really good young man.

Warmest regards,
Victoria Gunther

Bling Bling Everlasting

Well Family,
How’s it all going? So I hear we have a new little one in the family- Woohoo! Ok so I am on my mission, I don’t do math- so how old will this one be when I get home?

(Well Mom, how was talking with Sister Gunther? Did you have a good chat? She really loves you.)

Well, there are a few things that are cool that happened this week. I will start with the funny/crazy experience first. So we were walking like all of us do and to get straight to the point, we look over and see a whole bunch of lizards on a tree. And they were big ones too; some of them were as big as my forearm. Crazy, huh? I didn’t have my camera otherwise I would have taken a pic of it. It was crazy.

And another cool thing, my comp and I were chased down by a bunch of African gray parrots... no really they were dive bombing us. I don’t blame them, if some one threw a pinecone in your house would you be happy?... he he ha ha.

Ok so there are a lot of good things that are happening, we are going to set up another baptismal date for Jared Burk, our closest to baptism. We are both very exited. Oh yeah, there are a lot of missionaries from SO CAL going to the Denver North Mission, one of which is going to be Elder Carpenter. He is a member and his mom is not, and we are now teaching his mom because she wants to know what he will be doing. Remember Elder Carpenter- he will actually be coming from Arizona, but his mom lives here in Redlands.

Ok well next time you hear from me we will hopefully have a baptism date. Love ya.

Brraaaap

SWEEEEET week this week! We got two new investigators who are sold. They are a referral from the Gunther family (mostly from Jennifer Gunther because the referrals are her friends). One of her friends, who we are now teaching, is Kasey. She is 16 and loves the missionaries and has heard a little of the discussions before. The other friend of Jenni is Kat and she is way cool. She also has a strong desire to know more about her friend’s beliefs.
Ok cool experience I had this week. I was on exchanges with another missionary in my zone and I was up in Highlands and we went to go see a less active member. And they have this huge yard from the gate to the front door it was about, I would say, 50-60 feet and up hill- kind of steep at night, pitch black and we had a really hard time seeing. Anyway we started our way to the door and we heard a whole bunch of chihuahua dogs in the distance (or what we thought was in the distance). And the whole time we were walking it felt like something was trying to pull our pants down (no for real that is what it felt like) and as we got closer to the house the motion lights went on,and you will never guess what we saw. Each of us had, no joke, 10 or 12 little dogs hanging by there mouths on our pants; it was like ornaments on a Christmas tree. It was great. Finally the owner came out and was laughing so hard they were crying. Well, I would also if I saw two Elders being attacked by chihuahuas... it was great.
Well I sure would love to here from you all soon. Love you and make sure you do your missionary work. I love you all!

Pictures from the Field - Sept. 9, 2008

An exciting day in the mail. Michael sent us the memory card from his camera - 2 gig of pictures and videos from the mission field. Here is a small collection...

Foosboogle- Sep 8, 2008

Wellllll Hellooooo there family,
How’s it going? Well this week is still going pretty normal. I am just showing the area to Elder Spainhower and the more I do that the more I think I might be staying in Redlands for another transfer. But here is what I am going to do, I am going to ask President if I can be on bike and only cover the Third ward (because we are getting new missionaries and we can split the two wards we cover). But the thing is that I my be training in that case, but of course, that is all up to the Lord.
Well, I see you have asked me a few questions. The suit that I ripped was not the stealth suit. We always go home for lunch. Members actually do give us cookies. We drive a Toyota Corola 2008 and I am the driver. My comp is from North Ogden. And all the other stuff is happening, don’t worry mom.
Well I also hear that it is 55 degrees there in CO; well we are still at 105 and one day it got to 109. Wow that day of tracting we were soaked in sweet, but hey that’s our ticket into doors. They feel really bad for us and let us in. It’s great.
Well I am trying to think of a good experience for ya’ll......oh, of here’s one for ya; you know how I am always serving in a place with a university? Well, school is back in so there are students everywhere and we end up teaching half the students there. Just by walking through it almost all the kids know us know, it is sweet.
Well family, I love you and will talk to you later.

Sweet as a Treat

So this week is going great. My new companion Elder Spainhower is so cool and a lot like me- so I am really exited to work with him. He has been out 17 months so he knows what he is doing. He is from Ogden Utah, born and raised in Logan. Well this week has been pretty cool, just going around showing my comp the area and visiting important members. Not a lot of cool exciting things have happened this week... oh other than the fact I got two packages and a lot of letters (I got the one from Mom and Dad, a package from Abby and a whole lot of letters).... now that’s what missionaries like.

Well, I figured one thing out; I am probably going to be working in ghetto/poor places my whole mission. I found that you ether work in rich areas or really poor areas. The reason I found this out is because my comp and I didn’t have a dinner-so we went with the 4th ward elders- they are the elders in the really rich area. We had the wonderful opportunity to eat at a multi-million dollar house (My word was it the coolest experience ever). We weren’t in the house much because it was a barbeque but their backyard was awesome. They had a swimming pool that looked like the one in Casa Bonita but bigger. And it was killer because I couldn’t go in it. But this is the cool thing there is a part were we could walk in the water were it went up to the mid-calf oh man did that feel good..... but that is probably the only time in my mission (or ever) that I will have that opportunity but it was a good one.
love you , ELDER STONES

Read These: 3 Nephi 9 and 10; SS chapter 4 this one is weird; D&C 130