Email: Member Present Lessons

Hello my dear family,
                              How is everything going back at home? It sounds like things are going great back there with everything, except for of course grandma breaking her wrist. That was really unfortunate that, that happened Make sure and give her my best and let her know that I am praying for her.
                              So wow let me tell you a little about my week. Things have been amazing out here. This is definitely one of the happiest times of my life. I am just absolutely so blessed to be where I am right now with all that is going on around me. So to start off the whole Facebook thing is crazy! It is really nice in some ways but sort of weird in others. We are currently working through all of the kinks and things but it seems to be working out ok. i an awesome experience with it on Tuesday. I was on and i saw that one of our investigators was online. she is one that it has been very hard to get a hold of for a very long time. So what I did was start chatting with her and asked how her day was going. She was struggling really bad because of some things with her mother. i was able to share a little bit with her. Then i noticed that our Elders quorum president from out at the branch was on. i connected with them both and boom there you go, an online member present lesson. It was absolutely amazing being able to help her just by sitting at a computer. That girl is actually getting baptized this coming Saturday, we are super excited because it has been a long time coming. That experience right there showed me just how effective this tool can be.
                               Well lets see what else took place this past week. On Friday we headed about an hour and a half away from Redding to a place called Gridley. We had our monthly zone leader meeting. it was a really great meeting with everyone. We discussed a lot about the way things are going in our zones. Like some of my past emails have said Redding is just exploding right now. This past month in August we averaged 36.2 member present lessons, this is huge because back in like May and June we only averaged about 19, so that is a huge jump. This past week we had 41, it is just so awesome to see the work moving forward the way that it is and to see the way that the members are rallying around us missionaries to help is such a blessing. We also talked about our upcoming training meetings, which will take place this Thursday. It was a great meeting where i really feel like i learned a lot.
                               So the reason that i am emailing so late is because we decided to utilize our surroundings and go do something fun outside. We went and did this hike called the Castle Crags hike. It is about 3 miles to the top, it was a ton of fun and great to switch things up and do things a little differently. It was a little tiring and reminded me of how out of shape i am but it was definitely worth it. Also on our way back we saw this huge fire going on. It is a couple miles outside of Redding and moving fast! But luckily not in our direction. it is headed towards two small towns call Igo and Ono which are both in our ward boundaries so hopefully they can knock it down before it gets there.
                           Well that is about it for the week. Dont worry i am still doing great and loving it here. I love you all and hope all is going well. i love you all and hope you have a great week

Love Elder Payne

Email: The Future is Now!

Hello to my wonderful Family,
                                  Well I have some very big news to share with all of you. You may have noticed some activity on my account on a certain social networking site over the past few days. No, you don't need to worry I have not just gone super disobedient and started breaking all of the rules. My mission is now one of 12 missions in the World that are piloting, you guessed it, Facebook! We found out on Friday that we are going to be using Facebook as a proselyting tool. It is crazy, I never in a million years would have thought that I would be adding people on Facebook and sharing videos and stuff on there while on my mission. The past few days have been very strange trying to figure out how we are going to be doing this. We found out that it is just going to be starting with the Zone Leaders and some select Sisters and then eventually filter out to the rest of the mission. One of the things we have to do is make our Facebook pages much more professional. That involves going through and hiding all of the pictures that are not in line with our calling, as you can imagine that means there are quite a few that I have to go through and hide. We also have to clean up all of the posts that we have been tagged in or have posted ourselves. So if you have seen that I have untagged myself there is a reason for that.
                      I am very sure that this new tool that has just opened up to us will definitely help to further the work. This is most assuredly the generation that can use these resources for what they were meant to be used for. Like I said on Friday I learned a little of how we can use Facebook to teach lessons and do things like that. This is going to be a huge learning experience for me and I am excited to see where it will lead the work.
                  So other than the announcement about Facebook the rest of the week has been pretty dull. haha  So on Wednesday I was on exchanges up in a little place called Weaverville. It is this little tiny city of only about 3,000. I got to meet some really neat people and have a lot of really great lessons. One of which was with this Less Active family. They are older and just kind of one day stopped coming to church. We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how we need to continually be reading it. There are so many teachings in there and so many things that can help us that we really can be blessed by it. The woman at one point said," I have already read it why do I need to read it again?" At the point I was able to bear my testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon and how it has blessed my life by continually reading it. I sure hope something that I said will help them. Anyways then on Friday we had our Zone conference. That is where I found out about Facebook. Then Elder McMurray and I got to give a training on the Doctrine of Love. It was a really neat experience teaching about love and how important it is to have it in our zones, districts, and companionship's. We read from Matthew 22:36-40 that talked about the first great commandment. Then we read a little from Jeffrey R. Hollands talk "The First Great Commandment". It went really well, we got to talk for about 25-30 minutes.
                                  In our zone we had 4 baptisms this past week. It was amazing to see the miracles that are taking place out here. Well I believe that is all I have for the week. Like I said it was a crazy one but it was great. I love you all and I am so grateful for the amazing family that I have. I hope you all have a wonderful week.

Love Elder Payne