Email: Tough Week

Hello to you all,
I sure hope that all of you had a wonderful week last week. Things here have been great as ever. It was a little tougher of a week because we had a lot of appointments fall through. That didn't come
without its fair share of good and great things though. So this email is probably going to be pretty short. I am apologizing in advance.
The week overall was pretty good. As I said we had a lot of appointments fall through. I am sure you are curious about Joe, well we weren't able to meet with him. We rescheduled for this coming Sunday. We do have a baptism coming up this Saturday. His name is Wyatt, I think I talked about him a little last week. The baptism is Saturday at 3:30 in between the 2nd Saturday session and the priesthood session. It should go pretty well. Anyways overall it was a pretty uneventful week. It
rained quite a bit, which was a major blessing for sure. It sounds like your week was pretty crazy with moving people around and cheer tryouts and such. I am glad that everything is good for you.
Please keep praying for me I surely need it. Also any advice with the whole Will situation would be appreciated. I love you all and hope your week goes well.

Love Elder Payne

Email: Arrived in Oroville

Good morning,
        Well I sure hope this past week has been a good one for you all. Things here have been pretty crazy as I am sure you can imagine. It was actually a pretty long week for me. It seems like the first week in the new area is always a long one. We spent most of the week just going around and trying to get to know the area. This is a pretty big area so there is a lot to cover.

  Last Monday was a pretty crazy day. We spent most of the day just running around and trying to say goodbye to a few people. I obviously didn't have a whole lot of people to say goodbye to because I wasn't there very long. There was one family that I got pretty close to, the Brown family. They are actually moving out to Utah in April so I told the one guy that we had been working with there, that we would have to go do some stuff together when I got home. His name is Cody and he isa nice guy. Currently a little Less active but he is coming back. Anyways that is pretty much what my P-day consisted of. Oh also a lot of packing. You know you never realize how much stuff you have until you have to pack it.

   Then came Tuesday, and that was an extremely long day. I started by actually going and getting some pants! So yes I did get pants finally. I knew that there wouldn't be very many places in Oroville to buy pants so I went and got some there. It was nice I got two nice pairs for only like 35 bucks. Anyways my ward mission leader down in Antelope. He is a really nice guy and good company on the drive up. Anyways when I got here we hurried and threw all my stuff into the apartment and had to go meet up with some other Elders. It was and extremely long and busy day.  I went back and unpacked and got all settled in later that day. The rest of the week was spent meeting people and getting to know the area. I have really been focusing on staying positive and trying to understand why I am here and what it is I need to do. I really feel there is a lot I have to do here and so hopefully I can get it all accomplished in the time I have left.

   So the area I am serving in is actually really nice. It reminds me some of like Logan but a lot more ghetto and a lot more poor. This time of year it is really green and pretty. All of the people are super nice and humble. So it is sort of like a combination of Logan and Redding and South Ogden. haha Anyways my comp is a pretty good kid. You can tell he is very young and has a lot to learn still. He has only been out for 5 months or so, so he is still unsure of his teaching and things of that nature so I am doing my best to help him out. He is from Bountiful Utah so just another Utah boy. Anyways I am getting used to the fact that I am here and this is hopefully where I
am going to finish here.

     We are teaching a few good people so hopefully we can get them to baptism soon.  I will definitely be letting you know more about all of those people. Well I love you all very much and I am grateful that I have such a great support system back home. It definitely makes things so much easier for me. I am glad that you are all doing well and that Savannah is doing ok as well. Thank you for all of the updates, know that I love you all very much. Have a great day.

Love, Elder Payne

Email: Sick..Bummer.

Hello to my family,
                            How is everyone doing this week? I know that last week was a really tough one but I hope you all made it through ok. I know that it definitely was very tough for me at times but I am doing a lot better this week. Unfortunately just yesterday I came down with a really bad cold. It has just killed me the last two days. It has sort of being going through all of us missionaries. First a sister in my zone had it then it spread to my comp. then it went to me. Sometimes as companions we share to much. haha So it sounds like Grandmas funeral and everything went really well last week. That is wonderful, that is exactly what she deserved is a great memorial to her and the wonderful lady that she was. Thank you so much dad for the package that you sent me, it really meant a lot. I was feeling really down that day and it really helped to lift my spirits. Also mom thank you so very much for that story that you sent me about getting sick. It really is amazing the miracles that our Heavenly Fathers works in our lives. Sometimes they are not as prevelant as we would like but occasionaly he works amazing miracles like this. I am so glad that things were able to go so well at the funeral.
                                So a little on what went on here this week. We spent a lot of the week working with this one family, the Windoms. We are working on helping the father quit smoking still. He seems to be getting close to quitting. He really wants to get baptized so it is really sad that he has been able to get baptized up until this point. His son is also really ready to get baptized but he is just waiting for his dad. So that is what is going on with them. Also we picked up a new investigator this past week. We got a voicemail on Monday from a little boy. He said that he is 12 years old and wants to get baptized. He has permission from his mom and is ready to take the lessons. It was pretty awesome and a great miracle. Well that is about all i have to report this week. Like I said I am sick right now and it is not easy to sit here and type I apologize but I promise next weeks will be much better and longer. I love you all so much and hope you are all doing well.

Love Elder Payne

Passing of Grandma Payne

Our sweet Grandma Irene Payne passed away early Monday morning. Mom & Dad were able to talk to Hunter and Hunter was able to say goodbye to Grandma. What a blessing that was!

He didn't have much to say in his email since he'd just talked to the family except that the missionary work is going great and he is very sad about Grandma, but bore his testimony of the plan of salvation.

He did send this picture which applies perfectly to this week...

We are praying for Hunter as I'm sure it's hard to be away from family this week.

So thankful for the gospel!

Email: Really Sick! :(

Hi family,
              I am really sorry but this is just a note telling you guys that I am going to be emailing you tomorrow. I am extremely sick today and can barely stand sitting at this computer right now. I was up most of the night last night puking and......well i will save you from the details of the other end. So ya it kind of sucks. In fact i threw up so hard I broke a blood vessel in my eye, and a few in my eye lids!!! crazy right well I love you and i loved all of the pictures. You guys all look so great and little savannah looked just beautiful in her dress. Once again i am sorry but I will fill you in better tomorrow. Love Elder Payne


P.S. here is a pic of me last night after upchucking what felt like two gallons of stuff!!!!

Email: Hard Times last week, Miracles this week

Hello everyone,
                    How is the family doing? It sounds like things have been going pretty well back home. I really loved all of the pictures of mom and drake and Linds and Rob. It looks like you all had quite a bit of fun out there. oh by the way mom thank you very much for everything you said it definitely helped a lot. Dad i hope things haven't been to stressful for you. I know that this time of year is definitely your busiest but hopefully the taxes didn't overwhelm you to bad this year. I hope the rest of the family is doing well too.

So this week we definitely saw a few miracles happen. The first of which was that we were able to set a baptismal date with a new investigator! So we met this lady named Cece the first week that Elder Hyde got here. She has one young son who is only 6 years old. He is a cute little kid and isn't afraid of anything. In fact the week we met them he had just broken his arm and the next time we went by he was out riding his bike and scooter. He is a funny little kid. Anyways Cece's husband died about 3 years ago in a car wreck and that really hit them really hard. We even asked them do you believe you will see your husband again? She responded well I hope I will, I'm not entirely sure though. That really struck me and made me want to help this lady even more. So this past Thursday we went by and found her home again. She invited us in and we were able to have a really amazing Restoration lesson with her. She was absolutely loving the lesson and the things that we were teaching her. it was really neat to see someone who is as prepared as her accepting the things that we were teaching her. So at the end we talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how it is here to help us in our lives and she was so happy to hear about that. Anyways we invited her to be baptized on May 18th and she accepted saying if I come to know that it is true by then yes I will be baptized. Oh wow that was such a neat lesson, she is a wonderful lady who I know can really benefit from having the Gospel in her life.

We were also able to have another lesson with Marian. This one went a lot better than the first one we had with her when she was drunk. ha ha We taught her the message of the Restoration and she took it very well. She has family that are members of the church and so she already had somewhat of a base on our beliefs. We also committed her to be baptized and she said that she would pray about it. So things are picking up a little bit. i have really been working on being more and more bold. I am trying to get to the point where I can just walk up and talk to anyone about anything. I think i am making some improvement but I know I need to keep going.

I don't remember if I told you last week but our investigator Paulette Faulkner passed away, she was only 65 years old. It was really sad mainly because she was the last of her family that was still alive. Some of her family died about 10 years ago in a car wreck and then her parents died about 2 years ago of some complications. It really shocked a lot of people how quickly it happened to her. Anyways we had a little memorial service for her at the care center. One of her family friends asked us just to speak for about 5 minutes on the Plan of Salvation. I spoke mainly on the things that we had taught her and how she was going to be able to live with her family again. I shared with them Alma 40:11-12. I really love that one it talks mainly on the spirit world.

Well that was pretty much our week. Things have been improving and I have been trying to be more positive and recognize the good I am doing.  I love you all and hope everything continues to go well.

Love Elder Payne

P.s. Hey dad thank you very much for what you said in your email it really made me think a lot.Thanks for being such a great father! HAve fun out golfing you deserve it

Email: Knocking Doors

Monday, July 27, 2012

Hello Everyone,
                     Well this past week has been an interesting one. It started out really well and then kind of dropped off at the end. First I will tell you about  Alyssa and how things went with her. So I told you about the great lesson we had with her on Sunday. So we had another great one on Monday night and then again on Thursday night. She is finally finding the drive to learn more and learn for herself. We have been mostly reading through the Book of Mormon with her. It has been so great to see her faith growing. SO Thursday we invited her to come to a baptism that was going on Saturday. We had planned with her to have a lesson about an hour before and then attend the baptism with her. In the lesson we were going to invite her to be baptized. Well when we went to pick her up. Guess what? she wasn't home. Well that was probably one of the most disappointing moments of my mission thus far. I think it hit so hard because things have been progressing so well with her. As far as finding new investigators we have been unsuccessful in finding anyone yet. That is definitely not from lack of trying. We have been knocking so many doors and talking to so many people with little to no success, but we keep going. I can feel the spirit whispering to me just keep going. So that is what I do I just keep going.   However good news some of the other elders in our zone are finally starting to see some success. So the prayers are definitely helping.
                Last Thursday was awesome. We had a half-mission conference. Elder Cardon of the 70 came and spoke to us. It was such a great experience because both Elder Cardon and President Weston spoke. It was fantastic. I learned a lot about sacrifice and really focusing on what I am doing here.I was so happy I was able to go to that and really gave me a boost for the day.
                 Mom I really liked the package you sent me there was a lot of random stuff in there but it was great. I especially loved the banana bread. It tasted absolutely delicious. So keep that coming. As far as things with my bike. I actually broke a spoke on it, so I am going to have to get that fixed sometime. It probably wont be for a little while because it isn't to bad right now and I can deal with it for now. Anyways some new shirts wouldn't be bad either. As you can imagine with how sweaty i am they get kinda nasty. haha Well I love you all so much and I hope you all had fun at the fair. I miss you a lot.
                                                                             Love Elder Payne

Email: Tough

Monday, August 13, 2012

Hello to my wonderful family,
                                    Well this past week has been one tough week. It has been tough for a variety of reasons. 1. One of our most progressing investigators moved suddenly on Saturday. It was Makayla, the little girl that was so close to baptism when I first got out here. She is moving somewhere like south Sacramento. That was such bad news because we were so close with her. 2. We have not been having very much success lately. We have been working so hard trying to find new people to teach, mainly because our investigator pool is dwindling. We have been trying multiple ways to move the work along in this area with little to no success. and 3. It has been absolutely blazing out here. I dont know if you have been checking the weather for this area but it has been just a little steamy. I think the past 4 or 5 days have been above 100 every day. It is supposed to continue like that later into this week too. As you can imagine with how much I sweat I have been just a little gross.haha I basically am just dripping all the time. One perk of being getting as sweaty as I do is that a few people take pity on me and give us water. We try our best to stay cool but it is hard when it is as hot as it is out here.
                                   So i would tell you more about people we are teaching but like i said we dont have that many people to teach right now. That is why we are trying to find so much right now. We did have a few people that seemed a little bit interested that we tracted in to. Two of those people accepted pamphlets and the other jsut said we could come back. That was such a blessing to finally have somebody that didnt just slam the door in my face (which actually happens a lot more than I thought it would). Those couple of people that would actually talk to us was such a moral boost. It made things so much better and even made it seem a little less hot. I was so disheartened until then. With the week we had things just seemed like everything was against us, but finally a little glimmer of hope made things not seem so bad anymore. Other than that we are just basically working as hard as  we can with the time that we have.
                           So it is good to hear that things are going pretty well for everyone back there. That was exciting to hear that Staci's baby is doing well. i feel bad that she still isnt feeling well.  When does the sickness usually go away? Speaking of babies how is baby claire doing? i would love to see some pictures of her and baby jeter as well. I am really jealous that you all got to go to wicked. That  must have been really fun to go see again. Oh yeah I got a letter from Derek and Tevan. They both sounded like they were doing really well. So I know that Tevan still has a little while but how much longer does Derek have. I think he might be leaving this week but I am not sure. With Whit when does she go back to down to school? I got a pretty hilarious letter from her only is sucks because my companion doesnt really get the inside jokes that me and her have. haha. Anyways I love you all and cant wait to hear back from you. I love you
                                                                  Love Elder Payne