When the entire valley is filled with smoke, you know the wildfire is pretty close...

Good morning everybody!
Well, as you can tell by my subject, wildfire season has officially hit Utah. Very late in the season, but very prevalent right now. The entire Salt Lake Valley was filled with smoke yesterday thanks to fires surrounding the valley everywhere. It kind of seemed like the giant dust storms down in Mesa but instead of breathing in dust and dirt, you were breathing in smoke and everything smelled somewhat like a campfire. The entire mountain to the southwest of the valley was on fire and at night it lit up like a huge beacon and gave light to our Riverton Stake and could be seen for miles and miles and miles. No worries though I am not in any danger. The missionaries that live about 7 miles west of us had to be evacuated but unless the fire can move 7 miles in the next few days, we are safe. That was pretty exciting last night. I will send a picture of it next week, once I have my camera and can take pictures again. Hopefully, a bunch of good baptism pictures as well. Utah is back up into the 90's this past week and this week and it feels great! Absolutely amazing! It is supposed to cool back off soon though and you know Fall is in the air because all the mountains have started to change from green to orange, yellow, red, and gold. Very pretty, and before you know it, they will be doused in white again. The seasons are gorgeous up here, I will give it that. Lots of things have been going on the past week and lots of things have happened. Still haven't found any new investigators but we have a bunch of potential appointments set up right now and are trying to catch a bunch of people that are excited to take the lessons. The problem is that now that school is back in session, the work has slowed down, quite a ton. With school, football, clubs, music, dance, and who knows what else, no one is at home anymore or has any great amount of free time. We are trying though and are working as hard as we can to stay as busy as we can. The Lord has blessed us to catch people at home and having hearts softened that I never dreamed would happen. Elder Gosch and I are getting along better, which is great and I have learned quite a bit from him and hopefully he is learning something from me. I still find it hard to always be in the driver's seat all the time, since Elder Gosch has little to no intiative but he is trying and improving. That is all I can ask for. I hope to get people to trust him soon though or this area is going to die out...all the people that call on the phone (which he holds because I am driving) only want to speak to me. If he answers and cannot hand the phone to me, they tell him to have me call them back later that night or when I am available. They will not talk to him at all. Makes a lot of work all night long for me. Oh well, I am sure by the time one of us ever has to worry about getting transferred we will get the members to trust him. He is doing a lot better.

Let's see what all happened this week.

Tuesday was a working day. The new mission president philosphy was sent this week in his announcements to our email. Here it is: "The first cause of failure is a subconscious will to fail. The will to fail manifests itself as “action to avoid action”. It is an ever active campaign of the subconscious to bring so many unnecessary activities into each day’s program that there isn’t sufficient time for action which would be most productive." So that means, everything that we used to do during the week meeting wise or otherwise that isn't strict proselyting is usually cancelled. We are having our second district meeting of the transfer tomorrow, and I think that might be the only other one that we get. I like having all the extra time to work, but it is taking some getting used to. A lot more brainstorming of activities to find people to teach during the hours when no one is usually around in the mornings. Tuesday was a true answer to prayer though because the Lord helped us to find new investigators to start teaching this week! We were able to catch Joey and Janene Day at home and they have agreed to meet with us this Wednesday. Joey is a returned missionary, now playing drums for the Baptist church, and Janene attends with him but "isn't Baptist." Both are interested in at least listening to what we have to say if nothing else. We will see how the appointment turns out. Also, I got the prompting to just go talk to less active parents and get their permission to teach their children and that was a true inspiration from God! The Lauritzen's and the Miller's were home and both gave permission for their children to be taught, when the ward has said about 100 times in the past that the parents were too hard-hearted to have anything such thing happen. It was a miracle! Now our only challenge is catching the kids at home to start setting up appointments, Eli Miller and McKenna Lauritzen both are in school, clubs, dance, sports, and never seem to be home! We are praying for the chance though and the 6th ward that they both work in is praying with us and trying their hardest to catch them.

Wednesday was probably our last temple day! It was a great session and it was a great feeling to be in the temple again and to feel the Spirit so strongly there. I am going to miss the temple, not because it used up time that I didn't have to work during, but because I could write down all the names of the people I was teaching on the prayer rolls and I know the Lord truly blessed those people because of that action and of all the faith of those who attend the temple. But the Lord knows my heart and desires and I am sure He will not bless the investigators or less actives less for me working harder and longer.

Thursday we taught Thomas Woodworth, and he is excited to be baptized this upcoming Saturday, the 25th. He is probably the most golden of golden investigators and a true answer to my prayers and petitions to the Lord. He will be getting baptized down in Hurricane where all his family and friends live, so we will not get to witness his baptism but it will be a sweet event and a very spiritual one. He is already excited to receive the priesthood and is counting down the days to when he can get his endowments in the temple. I think the Lord watches me struggle knocking on doors and never saying the right thing or catching people at home or whatever and so keeps dumping these amazing golden investigators on my lap. I appreciate that blessing and thank Him everyday for it.

Friday was another hard working day. Lots of knocking on doors and talking to people, but very little interest of enthusiam from those we met with. It was a still a good day though and Whitney Snell should now be getting baptized about halfway through October. She is so excited for it and her parents have committed to take her to church, not sure if it will actually happen, but they said that they would and looked pretty positive about it. They have testimonies of the gospel and know the church is true, they are just lazy! But hopefully we can overcome their laziness and work with them towards getting worthy to go to the temple again and getting Whitney baptized. Such is my prayer constantly everyday.

Saturday was another working day. We got the car washed (finally) and it now actually looks fairly nice. We correlated with a lot of bishops and ward mission leaders about needs that we had or that we needed to talk about. Also, I managed to get the waffle maker broken at Roxberry Juice. We went there for dinner because our dinner cancelled. They had just barely started to offer waffles and were excited to do so, but the guy who was making my waffle, didn't grease the waffle maker. So they washed it out with that strong sink thing that they use to wash out blenders like at Jamba Juice and it broke. What was supposed to be about a half hour dinner, turned out to be about an hour and a half as we tried to help them clean up the mess and they kept trying to get the waffle maker back working to get my dinner done. It was good though, the cashier there was taking missionary lessons in the stake right next to where we work in Draper, so we got to talk to her and encourage her to keep going for her baptism date of October 9. It was a nice Spirit there as we all bore our testimonies. Saturday night we had the adult session of stake conference in Riverton. It was an amazing meeting. President Higbee talked about something that really touched me. He talked about the recent Ensign article about Lehi's Dream by President Packer and how we were all inside the great and spacious building because of television. But most importantly he went over the work "mock" and how it keeps us glued to the building instead of glued to the rod. He used the story of Lot from the Old Testament and how he was commanded to flee form Sodom and Gomohorra. He went to go tell his sons-in-law to flee with him, but they "mocked" him. Lot left anyway and was protected for it, while his sons-in-law were destoryed. How often do we not cling tightly to the Iron Rod because others are mocking us and we do not flee the great and spacious building because of mocking? His point was to be like Lot and raise the voice of warning and then to flee from the world regardless of the heavy mocking and who it comes from.

Sunday was a great day and it went by superfast because we had appoinments and meetings all day! It started off with a general priesthood meeting in the Draper Mountain Point Stake. It focused on the talk "Good, Better, Best" given a few years ago at General Conference by Elder Oaks. The question to ask ourselves for every activity we are doing is if that activity will help us return to our Heavenly Father and brings others with us? Or does it keep us stagnant on the path back to him? Or does it turn us away form Him and push us back on the path? Such simple questions but if we apply them to every activity and amusement that we pursue, I think we would change a lot of what we do. I know I need to when I get back home. After that, we had a PEC in the Mt. Point 6th ward. Went over all those people we hope to start teaching, good meeting. The bishop and priesthood leadership have really caught the fire of missionary work because of all the excitement. After that, hustle back to Riverton for the general session of stake conference. It was a great session, but I was so tired and worn out, my notes were terrible, so I don't have much to report. However, after that we hustled over to Mt. Point 6th ward sacrament meeting and that was good. Then back to Riverton to see Noa's baptism!!! One of the highlights of the whole day. It was a great spiritual experience and his mom and father and stepfather were all there and dressed properly. Even though they are all kind of anti. All there felt the Spirit and it was a very sweet and touching experience. After that, back to Draper to see Sam Nay get the Aaronic priesthood so he can baptize Kamomi on this Thursday. The blessing that followed the ordination was simply beautiful and had just what he and Miki need to stay fully active and to lead their children in righteousness. We are so excited for him and for their family! They are AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL!
After that, back to Riverton for dinner and a FHE with the Peart family. Then we had a simply fantastic lesson with Tina and Bailee Reese. Tina has decided to get baptized and is excited to do so!!! We had a lesson truly taught by the Spirit answering questions and helping her out. I came to really love and appreciate Bishop Heaps because he is the ward mission leader and was sitting in there helping us to teach. He and I taught together the whole lesson and Elder Gosch chimed in helpful testimony and stories that were not distracting or way off topic. It was great! I am so excited for them and to be reteaching fully by the Spirit again! It makes the biggest difference!

Well, I am out of time again. But I love and pray for you all!
Elder Hughes