I've been kind of a slacker getting Kyle's letters on here so this post has the last two weeks.

May 10, 2010

Hello!

Well this week hasn't been too exciting for us. Last night we had a pretty awesome storm hit us. It was raining really hard. Everyone else said it was thundering and lightning pretty bad. I was passed out so I have no idea how bad it got. I was exhausted last night. I woke up just before it started raining really hard and then I was out after that.

While I was on exchanges with the zone leaders, we tracted from 10 until 6 without getting into any doors. We had a total of like 40-50 OTM's. It was a long day. We have been trying to do a lot of finding in our area as well cause we don't have very
many investigators. We haven't had any luck so far. We'll find quite a few potentials and then we can never get in contact with them again.

This saturday we had our Zone Conference. It was pretty awesome! We learned a lot from our leaders. Our song went pretty well. Our Zone Leaders said that it sounded really good. Unfortunately I don't have a good recording of it. Saturday night was the wards Tribute to Womanhood. We helped out with that. We got a free dinner out of it. We had steak, baked potatoes, salad, chicken, rolls, and cheesecake for dessert. We spent 12 hours at the church. We got to the church at 8 and we left the church at 8.

Sunday we had some of our Less-Actives that we've been teaching come to church. One of the sisters hadn't been there for almost ten years. She really enjoyed it and said she hopes that she can start coming regularly. We had a visit with John and Mary. Mary is still doing well. She finally got over her sickness so she could come to church. I think she has come to church over a dozen times already. Then I got to call you guys!

I bought a workout book last monday so I've been going through the workouts in there every morning now. Hopefully I should be getting into some pretty awesome shape pretty soon! I have gone through all of the Perplexus now. I beat it from 1 to 100! It actually didn't take me that long to do. Today we are going to be getting together with some other missionaries from our zone and we are going to play some basketball and some volleyball. It should be pretty fun!

Well that's pretty much all for this week. Oh, so I was thinking about getting an electric razor in a few weeks. That way I won't have to be buying razors every 4 weeks. In the long run it will save us some money. Just let me know what you think about doing that.

Well I hope that all is still going well for you all. I love you all and I
keep you in my prayers.

Love Elder Joyner

Investigators:
Mary - Mary is doing well. She has cut her smoking down to half a cigarette a day. She has to stop smoking at the latest by May 22 in order to be baptized on June 5. In reality, we want her to be stopped smoking by about May 17. She's made quite a bit of progress pretty quickly so hopefully it should be no problem for her. She has been opening up to us a lot more about the things that she doesn't understand. We have helped her understand quite a bit. We usually meet with her twice a week so she should be ready for the 5th. John and Mary are planning on getting married by the bishop on May 22

Brian + LeeAnn - We met with Brian and LeeAnn on Friday. LeeAnn told us that she finally prayed! They have been having trouble keeping up with the rent. After she prayed about it, Brian got another part time job and they won't have any problem covering the rent. Brian is still trying to get back to where he is ready to be baptized. Hopefully LeeAnn will start having a desire to be baptized as well. She really likes having us come over. She has a pretty good friend in the ward so hopefully something will click with her soon.

May 17, 2010

Well this week has been pretty interesting. We have had some really awesome thunderstorms come through here. We got rained on like four times while we were out. We got soaked! We came in one day for lunch and we had to throw our clothes in the dryer cause we had already gotten so wet. I had a Wal Mart truck driver splash some water on me from a puddle. We had a basketball tournament last monday with some of the missionaries from the zone. It was pretty awesome. My team got eliminated pretty quickly cause Elder Tong and I were the only ones who knew how to play basketball and he got injured right at the beginning of the first game. The other two team members weren't too good, but we had fun anyways. This monday we're going to go to some thrift stores to look for some awesome ties.

We didn't have a whole ton of lessons this week. We had two with Mary, we had one with Brian + LeeAnn, and a lady named Suellen. She was a media referral that we recieved for a Book of Mormon. She had met with missionaries in the past and wants to meet with us again. We have been doing a bunch of tracting lately. We don't have very many investigators so we're trying to fill up our teaching pool. We probably average about 2 hours of tracting a day. We have found some pretty awesome potentials, now we just have to contact them.

I'm going through the Book of Mormon again for my studies. I'm taking it a lot slower and I'm marking a whole lot of stuff. I'm marking: All the titles and names for Christ and Heavenly Father, The Christlike attributes from Preach My Gospel and the descriptions of Christ, Words of Christ, all the Priciples that are in Preach My Gospel, and then any verses that I like. I go through it a lot slower and I focus a lot more on what is going on and what is being taught.

We had interviews with President Merkley on Thursday. He said that he really likes Elder Barton and I as a companionship and that he would keep us together forever if he could. He said we are both really great guys and really hard workers.

Well not much else has happened here. I have to do a survey for Preach My Gospel here in a couple minutes. I'm real excited about that (Just Kidding). Well I hope that all is going well for you guys! I love you all!

Love Elder Joyner

Investigators:
Mary - She is doing well. She is scheduled to get married to John this Saturday at three. She has quit smoking. She was talking with their home teachers and they said that she is really excited to get baptized. She was excited that John will be able to baptise her. Hopefully all still goes as according to plan.

Brian + LeeAnn - We taught them about the Spirit World and we also talked about preparations that have to be done for baptism. Brian already knew alot of the answers and is trying to get there. LeeAnn still doesn't know what she wants. We feel like she knows what she wants, but that she is not willing to admit it. We found out yesterday that Brian has picked smoking back up. Hopefully we'll be able to help him quit.

Suellen - We taught her about the Restoration. She seemed to have understood it all. She is a little bit slow but can still comprehend things. We just have to explain things a little more simple to her. She has read into 2Nephi in the Book of Mormon before. She said that she would read the Restoration pamphlet and then meet with us again.

That's all for this week.