Email: So Much Great News!

Hello to you all,
                     Well from moms email it sure sounds like you are all having a pretty busy summer. That sounds pretty normal for the Payne household. Katey congrats on making All-American that is awesome. I am so proud of you. Hannah I am so happy for you as well. It sounds like you are staying extremely busy as well. How is the play practices going? Are you working hard? I sure hope so because the harder that you work the more it will be worth it.
                      So I am not going to tell you about transfers yet because I want to keep you on the edge of your seat. Let me tell you a bit about this past week. This week we were on exchanges quite a bit. That is one of my responsibilities as District Leader is to go on exchanges with everyone in my district. Well just with scheduling two of those exchanges happened on the same week. It made it feel like I basically wasn't in my area at all this week. ha ha Elder Hyde did a great job of taking over the area. He is really filling in very well. On Wednesday we had Kris Conrad's baptismal interview. That went very well. He was a little surprised when he showed up to the church and there were 6 Elders there. Everything was going well, or so we thought, until the Elder who was interviewing him asked me to come in for a moment. He told us that he felt that we should postpone the baptism for a little bit because he didn't get a clear answer on whether or not President Monson was a Prophet. Kris was like hang on a second I didn't say that I said that all the Prophets are Prophets and that the Priesthood authority was handed down. It was really neat seeing him really stand up for his beliefs like that. Anyways the interviewer was like alright sounds great we will proceed then. So then came the baptism on Saturday. Kris came and picked us up on Saturday at about 11:20 because the baptism was scheduled for 12:00. When we showed up it was great because we had to hand him off to other elders they had to take care of setting everything up. Kris was so amazed at the support that he got . There were quite a few people that showed up for the baptism, people from both our ward and from there ward. The baptism went very smoothly. I was so grateful that i was able to step down into the water with someone as prepared and amazing as him. When he came up out of the water he was just absolutely glowing he just couldn't contain himself. The sister of the other ward were very nice and prepared a great lunch after the baptism. On Sunday Elder Hyde confirmed Kris and he did a great job. He gave him a great blessing as well. I know for sure that Kris is going to go very far. I am so grateful that I have had this opportunity to teach him. I know that there are going to be a lot of other people I teach, but I know that Kris is definitely one that I was sent here to teach.
                        I did get to watch the Broadcast at our church building. I didn't realize that Derek was on it I am going to have to try and find it again so that I can try and see him. So as far as facebook and stuff like that, we have not received and info on that yet. I am sure that we are going to be hearing more about that soon. I will keep you updated.
                              Alright so here is the big news. I am being transferred, I am actually going to be a zone leader now. I am also going to the very furthest North zone in the mission, Redding. I get to go be companions with Elder McMurray, who is one of my very good friends out here. I am so pumped for a variety of reasons, great area, great, comp, and many others. So that is all for now I love you all and you are all in my prayers. Thank you for all of the prayers on my behalf as well. I love you all.

Love Elder Payne

Email: No transfer and Pictures

Hi guys,
            I'm sorry but this email is going to be very short. It is just basically to inform you that I am not being transferred. Elder Hyde and I am staying together for another 6 weeks. There are three of the Elders that are being transferred out. I am excited to get to know some new Elders and get to know new people.
            It was so good to get to talk to you all Yesterday. You don't really know how much you miss someone until you get to talk to them again. I just want to thank you all for all that you have done for me. I truly have the best family in the world. i don't know what I would do without you all. So thanks again for being such a wonderful family. Hey dad I was just wondering if you could send me out my "toolbox" binder out to me. I would really love to have it. Well family you are all great and I promise that next weeks email will be much longer ha ha love you

Love Elder Payne

I hope you enjoy my pictures.

Brother Allan's mountain man stuff-

 For Whitney-

 A member called my Mom for Elder Payne's favorite cake and made her famous chocolate cake for him!

 Birthday packages!

 Mikayla was baptized on Elder Payne's birthday! Hunter was a witness.

 Making goop with Mikayla-

 Birthday celebrations for Hunter!

 Letter from Drake! Drake loves to cut little pieces of paper, scribble on them, and put them in an envelope for his uncle. He also drew him a picture of himself and wrote his name! This all came in one envelope. :)

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: Getting transferred to Rocklin

Dear Family,

Well from reading all of your emails it sounds like the cat is out of the bag. Yes the news is true I am being transferred. I am going to a place that is only like 20 minutes away from where I am now. That part kind of sucks because I was really hoping I would go further North but oh well where I am going will still be great. I am going to Rocklin which is known as kind of the rich part of the mission. I am also going to be the District Leader there. That part is pretty nerve racking. I'm not really sure what to expect but I am really excited to find out what it is like. I was kind of surprised when I found out that I was going to be the District Leader, like I said I'm not sure what to expect but I am very happy that President Weston has put that much trust in me. I am going to be serving with an Elder named Elder Peek. I don't know too much about him yet but I will be sure to let you know. I do know that he is just getting done being trained. He came out with Elder Holbrook.

Speaking of Elder Holbrook he has been selected as a trainer. Every single person in the Lincoln District is training. That is absolutely amazing! There are so many new missionaries coming out that it is just phenomenal. I am sure we are going to see a huge jump in the amount of work being done. Something really neat coming up, I'm not sure if I have mentioned this or not, but we are actually having an Apostle come here. He is coming out on March 9th and is having a special meeting with our mission. No one knows who or why he is coming but it should be a pretty amazing experience.

So this past week was a strange one again. We started out just fine, we had a bit zone conference on Wednesday where three Zones met. That went just fine, but on the way back one of the Elders we drove there with started not feeling very good. He had a really bad stomach ache and some other bad stuff going on. Anyways when we got back we gave him a blessing and Elder Holbrook and I had to go to a lesson. During the lesson we got a call from them but we had to silence it because we were in a lesson. Anyways after we called them back like 3 or 4 times. When they answered the other Elder told us that the sick one had passed out had like a mini seizure and threw up everywhere, so he called an ambulance and they took him to the Hospital. The doctors thought he had appendicitis but fortunately for him it ended up being a lot more minor than they thought. He just had the flew on top of some intestinal inflammation and he was super dehydrated. So he was able to come back like a day later. We were all very worried but it all turned out fine. Unfortunately I was quite sick this week as well. I got hit by a horrible cold. It put me out of commission for a good two days. I am feeling much better now though and am back on my feet.

We were able to have one or two really good lessons this week. One was with the Plauts which went very well! They are coming along slowly but surely and with them I feel like it is only a matter of time. We also had a member just walk up to us in church yesterday and introduce us to someone who is interested in joining the church. That was such a shock and such a blessing. There is so much great work going on here and I am really going to miss this ward. There have been so many great people that I have met and been able to be around I really hope that my next ward will be able to match up with this one. I know that if i go in with the right attitude no matter what that ward can be a great one for me.

Well it sounds like everyone had a great Valentines day which was great. I had a great one as well. It wasn't anything too different. I got a lot of candy and I feel about 15 pounds heavier because of it haha. I cant believe that there is a possibility by the next time i email you guys that there could be a new addition to our family. That is crazy the time has absolutely flown by. Good luck Staci, I'm sure everything will go just great. Well everyone I love you very much and appreciate all of the support that you are sending me. I Love you all and have a great week.

Love Elder Payne