Email: 15 mile bike ride and a baptism

Hi everyone,
                  I am just going to start off by apologizing now because this email might be kinda short. I am extremely exhausted. I guess I will start off the email by telling you why. This morning our ward mission leader took us on a very long bike ride. It was something that we have been planning for quite a while now but I wasn't really too prepared for. It was about a 15 mile bike ride up and down a mountain. It was a really pretty ride but tiring. I'm glad we did it but once again I am tired!
                   So about this last week. Oh boy this was a doosy of a week. It started out like any other week. Nothing to crazy or special, then came Wednesday. One of the young men from the Windom family decided he wanted to get baptized on Saturday. That means we only had from Wednesday to Saturday to plan and prepared for a full baptism. Let me tell you we saw some miracles. Everyone in the ward stepped up big, especially the young men. The baptism went amazing. He was so happy and his mother started crying when he got baptized it was such a neat experience. Also on Wednesday a family, the Lockwood's decided they wanted to get baptized as well. They are such a great family and so ready that we were so happy to hear that. Like I said Saturday the baptism went great and it was a great day, then came Sunday! On Sunday everything just seemed to fall apart. The young man that got baptized didn't show up to church to get confirmed because his mom was really sick. Also the family who was super ready completely backed out of their baptism. it was just a lot of really tough stuff at once. Hopefully this coming week will be better.
                       it is crazy Elder McMurray goes home next Tuesday. He is so close. It has been great being able to serve with him and I am grateful that i had that opportunity.
                        i am glad you all have been having a good time at Disneyland. I loved the pics. It looked like you guys had a lot of fun and made the most of your time. Well i love you all and hope you have a great week. I love you all and God Bless.

Love Elder Payne

Email: Some Funny, Weird Lessons

Hello my wonderful family,
          How is everyone doing this week? Well I sure hope everyone is doing well. I know that this past week was going to be a really busy one so hopefully things turned out well. So things actually went really well this week. I also got my new bike which is awesome. It is actually a really nice bike, I really like it a lot. Thanks again to everyone who helped me out with that. It was extremely stressful as you can imagine but thanks to all of you everything turned out alright. I will have to send you guys pictures of it as soon as I have one.

So a little bit about this week, it turned out to be a very successful week. I also had a few really strange lessons which i will talk about in a bit. We hit a  whole bunch of less active and potential investigators. It turned up a few pretty good leads. So with the weird lessons, The first of 3 of the weird lessons started on Thursday night. We had a lesson with this lady from our apartment complex. Now we had talked to her about an hour and a half before the lesson, just right before we went to dinner. So we arrive with our fellowshipper and she comes stumbling out of this taxi. I mean she can hardly stand up. Come to find out she was extremely wasted! We tried teaching her but she just kept repeating herself and repeating herself. It was absolutely hilarious. So as you can imagine it was pretty strange. What was really funny though is she called us the next day and apologized for missing the appointment. She didn't even remember that we had come over! So that was the first of the weird lessons.

Next was the very next morning, we met with a new investigator of ours. Come to find out he is Schizophrenic, he was saying some pretty strange stuff. One of those things was all I asked was do you believe that God loves us? He just went off for like fifteen minutes. At one point he mentioned Thor and Asgard and one day being able to be telepathic. That was just a very, very strange lesson.

Then to the third one, this happened the next day, so Saturday. We were checking on a less active member who wasn't there and this guy came out thinking we were robbing his garage. We were like no we aren't stealing we are actually missionaries. So we started talking with him about the gospel, unfortunately he was very high. He even told us that he was smoking medicinal marijuana. He eventually was like I want to have the discovery channel come out and have them follow you around. We were just like we probably cant do that I really don't think our mission president will allow us to do that. but we are going back there in a couple of days, so we will see how that goes. Well as you can see it was a strange but pretty good week. Well I love you all and hope things are going well for you all.

Love Elder Payne

P.S. Hey there I just got your email about the same time I finished this. I am so glad things went so well with Kate at prom. Thanks so much for all of the support you guys are all so amazing. Also thee is a family out here the McGhies that are really amazing. They are wanting some of dads organic flour and sugar and stuff they are really into organic stuff. So give them a call because I am sure they would love to buy some of his stuff. McGhies.

Email: Stolen Bike!

Dear Family,
                 How is every ones week been going? It sounds like it has been quite crazy back there with everything going on. I sure hope you can even find time to get everything done. At least you are all nice and relaxed from your cruise so that should make things a little easier for you. So a little about the bike situation, so we had them under our stairs, unfortunately because i was being stupid and lazy we did not lock them up. Anyways we went to bed that night woke up went down and helped some other Elders with some service and then came back. Some time between when we went to bed and came back they got stolen. We called the police, management and a few others that needed to be informed. What is crazy is that when Elder Peek and my bikes were stolen they were the sixth stolen in the past 7 days throughout the mission! Crazy right? So right now we are borrowing some of the bikes that the mission has. We ordered some from a member who owns a bike shop so they should be pretty good bikes. We are still keeping an eye out for our bikes so hopefully we can spot them soon.
                So as you can imagine with our bikes being stolen it was a little slower of a week. We spent a lot of time dealing with that. We were able to do a little bit though. On Monday evening we got a call from this old lady in our apartment and she needed help with something. So we went over and helped her out. We started talking about how she had come in contact with the missionaries and some of her views on religion and then we talked a bit about the Plan of Salvation. It was really neat just really connecting with someone and helping her to know a bit more about our beliefs. Anyways we are going to start teaching her now and her name is Mariam. So this week we spent a lot of time working with less actives and just trying to get in contact with people. Friday evening we had a ward talent show. I got dragged into performing in it with Elder Peek and another guy in our ward. i will have to send you the video soon. It was a lot of fun and absolutely hilarious. Also on Sunday I got to speak in church. I spoke on the talk given my Elder L. Tom Perry in the April 2009 conference. It is an amazing talking and you guys should definitely look it up and read it. I was a little nervous speaking because it was a homecoming for a guy in the ward but as soon as I got into it I was totally at ease. It ended up going really well and I hope that I was able to spark the members from the talk. In fact there was a less active lady who called us last night, who was in church this Sunday, and she said that she was very grateful for our talks and that they really inspired her to start changing her life and try to become better. I was so happy to hear that i was able to touch someones life like that, what a special experience. Well things are still going well here. I really like this area, it is heating up quite a bit. It has been up in the 70's almost every day. I am so grateful for each one of you. I am so grateful for the inspiration and support that i receive from you all. Please keep me in your prayers. I love you all and I am praying for you all as well.

Love Elder Payne

Email: Baby Savannah

Dear Family,
                 Well I cannot express just how happy I am to have received the news that little Savannah was born and now be able to see some pictures. She is an absolutely beautiful baby, and in the words of the great Michael Scott,(While smoking a cigar)"Ya, its a baby see!"
                            Random nurse: "Sir put that out, put it out!"
                            Michael Scott: " Man you cant smoke anywhere these days!"

               It is so amazing to have a brand new addition to our family. How is everyone feeling now? Have things slowed down any or is it still crazy there? Well I am really happy that everything went well. Keep me updated on everything that is going on with her.

                 So a little about this past week, I will also try to answer all of your questions. So I am in the Rocklin 2nd ward and things are going OK. It is definitely a lot slower than Lincoln, but we are trying to change that around. We were able to pick up two new investigators this past week. One of which isn't too solid but hopefully the one man we met will work out well. We have been working a lot with less active people so we were going around trying to meet more people that we don't know that are not currently active. We had a little success in finding people home but not too much. The bike riding is getting better, my rear end is still a little sore after longer rides but it is a little better now. My bike is holding up OK. I had to take it in and have about 3 spokes replaced and a new chain put on, it is hanging in there though. This past week we had my 2nd district meeting, it went a lot better than the first and I was a lot more relaxed. We covered the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was a great lesson to teach. What i did was I had each companionship take one point in the Gospel, study it for about 5-10 minutes and then present it to everyone else. It went really well and I think everyone really enjoyed it. I am trying to get everyone involved rather than just stand up there and drone on, I think that approach is helping a lot. I am really enjoying being district leader though. It isn't too much more responsibility. Basically the only extra work I have to do is teaching district meeting and going on exchanges. It isn't too bad and I like being able to interact with everyone.

                  This coming week is actually going be an interesting week. This Saturday we are having an apostle come and talk to us. I am really excited to get to see an apostle in such a close quarter situation. It should be a really amazing experience. Well that is pretty much it for me. My clothes are holding up fine. I am just trying to have them make it to my year mark. It should all be just fine though. I love you all and I hope everything is going well.

Love Elder Payne

Email: About Rocklin & New Address

Dear Family,

                 Well hello to one of the busiest families around. haha So let me just start out by telling you a bit about the area. So Rocklin is only like 15 to 20 minutes away from Lincoln. In fact it is right between Lincoln and Citrus Heights. There are quite a few apartment complexes around here and it is mostly city. It reminds me a little bit of like Draper area. There are a few kind of older neighborhoods and then one or two neighborhoods with really nice houses. Our area is pretty big which kind of sucks being on a bike. Also there are a few hills here that have just about kicked my butt. Other than it isn't too different from my last area. It is a little like my first area and my last area combined. As far as people we are teaching, the work around here is going pretty slow. We currently only have one investigator who cant meet with us very often because she gets sick a lot. So that gives us plenty of work to do. We are really working right now to get the members involved, and get them out helping us because it is really hard to pick an area up when there is nothing going, especially if it is all by ourselves. So that is what is going on currently. My companions name is Elder Peek, he is from South Weber, so not to far from us. He has been out about 3 months now. So far things have been going really great with him. He is a really soft spoken guy which really allows the spirit to come in.

               So this past week I had to teach my very first District meeting, as you can imagine I was pretty nervous. I wasn't sure how it was going to go or what to expect but everything turned out really well. I am really blessed because I am in a district with a lot of really great guys. All of them are relatively young. Actually i came out with two of them. I really excited to be able to serve around all of these guys. My apartment here is pretty nice. It is a bit nicer than my last one and in a much better neighborhood.

               Well it sounds like things are a bit crazy back home. That is really sad to hear about grandma but it is good to hear that she is doing a little bit better. Give her my best and tell her I love her. That is also sad to hear about the boys basketball team. too bad they couldn't pull that out. Staci i cant believe that Savannah hasn't come yet, you look like you are about ready to pop. make sure you don't go around any sharp objects we don't want anything bad happening. Well i love you all and I hope I have answered most of your questions. before I go my address is 5780 Springview Dr. Apt. 57 Rocklin, CA 95677. Also I have not gotten the cuff links yet but they did arrive back in Lincoln and the Zone leaders are going to get them for me. Thanks a ton  I love You all and hope you have a great week and good luck with everything. 

Love Elder Payne

Email: How great will be your joy...

Hello to everyone back home and those suckers on a cruise ship somewhere in the Caribbean,
                     Well I apologize for the size of the email last week. I didn't have to much time so I had to write quick. So this past week has actually been a pretty good one. We had a lot of up and a lot of downs. I did learn a ton though and that, I believe is the biggest thing. Anyways so let me begin with the downs of the week.
                    We officially handed Honey and her Husband off to the Sacramento missionaries. It was a sad, sad day but it had to be done. We were able to talk with Honey and her husband as well as deliver a large print Book of Mormon to her. They were both just very grateful for the service that we had provided them as well as the time we took to help them learn more. I have been talking a lot about them both in my Presidents letters that I send each week. We actually had Presidents interviews earlier today. He told me that there are going to be some leadership opportunities coming up soon for me. That was pretty crazy to hear. President told me that I should count them as baptisms, because I was part of their conversion process. It was awesome because he told both Elder Halle and myself that if and when they get baptized we will be able to attend. That was such great news to hear. Dad shared with me some great incite, and sent me some things that were exactly what I needed to hear. I was very grateful for what he sent and it helped me to understand so much.
               " If Honey does join the church, you can still take pride in knowing you helped "bring" her into the gospel, and you were part of it.
               "And if it so be that ye should labor all your days…and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father! And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!” (Doctrine & Covenants Section 18, verses 10, 15, and 16.)"
                 So more of the ups of the week. We picked up a new investigator. His name is Gary. He is an awesome guy that we actually have a lesson with later on today. I just really hope the things that we teach him will stick because I know that is can really bless his life. Things with Kaylee are still going great as well. She is a very smart little girl so she is able to understand so much that we teach her. We have just been going over the commandments with her. She has maybe one or two lessons left. So that is pretty exciting as well. Other than that this past week has been a pretty ordinary week, nothing to crazy or unusual that has gone on. Ok I guess there were a few interesting things that happened. So we were on exchanges last Wednesday, I was with our District leader in my ward. At the beginning of the day we had set a goal to stop every single person we could at bus stops. So we are going around doing this. We had just crossed a street when I noticed a lady sitting at a bus stop. So before I passed her I slammed on my brakes to talk to her. Well the other Elder was behind me and didn't notice that I had come to and abrupt halt, so he looked up just in the nic of time to barely swerve passed me. I just continued on talking to her while he had to gather himself and come back around. We thought it was pretty hilarious because we just about ate it right in the middle of the busiest street in my area. So later on down the same road we were riding next to each other, he was in the gutter and I was on the sidewalk. All of a sudden a bus pulls up right next to us and starts to merge right into where he was. So he had to come right up onto the sidewalk to avoid getting hit. unfortunately that is exactly where I was. Also I couldn't get over any further because there was a bench blocking my way. We were so close his handlebars overlapped mine and I could feel his hands touch mine, ,all of this while still riding at about 15 MPH. Pretty fun stuff . Luckily we didn't collide and we ended up being OK. Anyways so that is a little bit of my week.
                    It sounds like things are going well back home. I  cant believe that Linds Rob and Drake are really getting ready to move out. It just doesn't seem real to me. I really hope things go well in the move. Also Staci I am so excited for you. I loved seeing the 3D pictures of the baby. I just cant believe there is really a baby inside you. ha ha How are you feeling about things? Nervous?Excited? A little of both? You are going to be such a great mother and I am so excited for you. Katey I got your letter thank you so much. I sent my reply back to you yesterday, so you should be getting it soon. And last of all but definitely not least Hannah thank you so much for the brownies. They are delicious. My companion was even saying how amazing they were. So thank you so much for doing that. You are getting to be a pretty amazing cook. Also mom and dad I hope you are having fun out on the cruise. I am extremely jealous because that is the ship that I wanted to go on like a year ago. Anyways things are great. Thank you so much for all of the support. I know you are all doing so much to help me out and I thank you for that. I love you all so much.

Love Elder Payne

Pictures in Citrus Heights!

Hunter just sent us home his memory card with some fun pictures and videos! It's fun to see him being his goofy self! Looks like he is doing great!

Pictures from 6/30/12-7/24/12

2 Great Danes-

Just chillin' (in apartment)-

 

Contact Jenga with Alfred. I think I have told you about him. Mexican mafia, has one leg-

No caption with this photo, but it must be a picture of his or his companion's tire- look at that worn out tread!

 A falcon in a tree

 Scripture Power (it's real!)-

 I was bored with Skittles-

Video of Elder Payne & Elder Woolley telling about their flat tire experience-

http://youtu.be/BfbQbfsLqkw

Metal that was in bike tire-

 Harry Potter wands- 

 Our zone (sorry we are fuzzy)

Sweet!

The ice cream challenge (at Leatherby's)- and yes, I did eat all of it! In under 15 minutes.

Elder Gillen (he leaves this next week)-

Our district-

Really funny (came from that little book you gave me)

(For all those who aren't writing him! haha kidding)

Email: Bikes

Monday, July 16, 2012

Hello Family
                Well this week has been extremely challenging and difficult but fun. So I will start on Tuesday. It started out just the same as any other day. We got up and took off out of our apartment at about 11. (We dont leave until then because i am new so I get an extra hour of study.) So we had to go to the library to do a thing for being a new missionary. Anyways on the way I must have hit something because my tire was losing air fast. SO I pulled out a piece of metal that was about 2 inches long that had gone right through my tire. Bummer so we had to walk my bike back to the church. We had a member come and pick us up and take us back the apartment to get an extra tube. So we took it back changed the tube and took off again to meet someone. We got about a mile and a half away from the church and guess what? Elder Woolley got a huge nail right through his tire. So we then got to walk about that far back to the church again. Luckily i had brought a patch kit with us. So all of this was going on in about 107 degrees outside. So that all took about 2 and a half hours to do all that. So after this we decided to go tract a street we had been thinking about tracting for a while. We start on one end door after door no one is interested. One larger lady was particularly rude she slammed the door in our face yelling " Ah Heck No!" only she didnt say "heck". haha Then a tender mercy. The very next door I knocked and told the man who we were and what we were out doing and asked him if he would be interested in hearing a message about Jesus Christ. To my complete and utter surprise he said yes. I was in complete shock I didnt even know what to say. I just looked over at Elder Woolley with a stunned look. He was stunned as well for about 3 seconds before he started in to the restoration and the Book of Mormon. Another big shock is he accepted a Book of Mormon and said he would read it and that we could come back. That just absolutely made my day. We havent been able to make contact with him again yet but hopefully soon. So the next day was about 108 which made for a lot of fun biking. Then finally it cooled off to about 95. Which felt so much cooler than the day before. The rest of the week went by pretty well until Sunday where we got another flat tire. Elder Woolleys back tire went flat. He had to borrow a members bike. So at the end of the week we didnt have the best numbers but we did recieve about 3 or 4 really good refferals and potential investigators.Hopefully they will play out for us.
                  Just letting you all know I am loving the work I am doing out here. It is so hard but so fulfilling. Tell Tevan that i love him. I can totally tell where he is coming from. The first few days in the MTC are pretty terrible. Tell him to hang in there and it will all be worth it. I was pretty far behind everyone in my class there as far as knowledge of the scriptures, but all he needs is a strong testimony, which I know he has, and a strong will to work, which is one of Tevans strongest values. Remind him of what i said to him in my talk. The whole world is expecting him to fail, only he can decide whether or not he will listen to the "World". I am so happy for Big D it sounds like his farewell talk went really well. I am praying continually for my two best missionary friends. Tevan and Big D so let them know how proud I am of them. Speaking of best friends how is Whit doing I havent heard much from her i ll bet she si really busy Tell her I love her and cant wait to hear from her.
                 So Rob and Linds are coming to join me here in Cali. Weird! I am excited for them to be getting such a great job oppurtunity. They are going to love it even though they have to leave there families. I have been praying for them to be lead in the best direction possible for them. I lvoe you both so much. So the cat is out of the bag with Staci huh? That is so exciting I loved the pics they emailed me they were great. Well I am runnning out of time i love you all and cant wait to hear back from you.
                                                                               Love Elder Payne

(I finally got a hold of Hunter's mission pictures, so I'll be adding them on here with his emails so you can see what a handsome missionary he is.)