Zone conference!

Sorry I didn't email last week. Things have been rough and we were in a cave all day last Monday. The zone leaders had somebody they knew, a less active I think, who had a cave on their property and so for a zone outing we all went caving. It was nuts. We had to walk through a lot of cold water, and most of the time the clearance was only 4-5 feet. It was definitely an adventure. We were in there for a good 3 hours I believe. There was a particularly tough spot right before we turned around where the ceiling was really low and we were slogging through water and there were a lot of pointy, sharp, painful rocks. My legs were really cut up. Then we got into a big mud fight inside the cave even though we were all already pretty covered in mud. I also got to drive our truck through a river and then we washed up in the river so we in a way got to go swimming! I will send pictures as soon as I can.

The other big news is that we had a zone conference. Normally zone conferences are 3 months apart but, Pres. and Sis Shumway called a mini-zone conference. Indeed it was mini because it was only like 3 hours long as opposed to the 8 hour long normal conferences. Apparently there was a mission presidents seminar, training thingy with lots of general authorities in Dallas that the Shumways went to and it was so good they wanted to share it with us right away. Obviously there were a lot of rumors going around about the conference that President put down at the beginning such as Sis Shumway was taking over as mission pres or that the mission was being split or even that we were all getting Ferraris. My colleagues and I thought that we were finally getting iPads but of course that wasn't true. It was a fantastic experience though. President shared a story at the end that was incredible. The Spirit was very strong. The conference also took place in Springfield in the Springfield South stake center which was the building I had church at in my last area. It was nice to be able to drive around my last area a little bit. I even saw my ward mission leader while we were driving. I also stopped by on some of my favorite members, so it was really fun. Also I got to see a bunch of missionaries that I was glad to see. I also signed my name on Sis Shumway's hand. Some other missionaries and I were talking to her after the conference and we were talking about how for the rest of the Shumways' mission, 10 weeks, there is going to be a big goal for the whole mission to strive for. So to make sure that we would agree to do it Sis Shumway made us sign her hand.... It made me think of like Kishkumen and stuff haha. 

The other big news is that we should be having a baptism this Saturday. His name is Izaiah and he is related to some active members who take him to church every week but his parents aren't active and he hasn't been baptized. So we jumped on it and started teaching him. His parents have sat in on the lessons and have been really supportive. Hopefully this will help reactivate them. They're really nice people and it's been really easy to teach Izaiah. I also gave their dog a blessing which was weird, and we didn't really know if that was something that you could do so we asked the bishop and he said yeah so yeah. 

Other than that there is not much else going on here. My companion and I have some good ideas and plans that we want to implement in this area but it's been a real struggle getting those plans in motion. But we are determined to work hard this week and get things done! It's gonna be nuts. It's so crazy, transfer calls are this Saturday. I've already been in Ava for almost 6 weeks! 

Love, Elder Naegle

April 15, 2015

Hey mom, sorry I didn't email last week, there's not much going on here so there wasn't really anything to email about. I like my companion. There's a 12 (I think he's 12) year old whose parents are inactive but his aunt takes him to church every week and he goes to scouts every Wednesday and he hasn't been baptized so we're gonna start teaching him. We actually have an appointment with him today so that will be good. I'm hoping things will start getting going here in Ava. That is all.

Love, Josh

March 31, 2015

We didn't have hardly any time to email yesterday so that is why we're emailing today. Anyways I am in a little place called Ava Missouri. The population here is less than 3,000. It's really small. But there is a Taco Bell, and there wasn't a Taco Bell in Parsons, so it's all good. It's also a ward here and Parsons only had a branch, so that's pretty cool.

My new companion is Elder Ewart and he is a stud. He's a really good wrestler from Delta Utah. He's won 4 state championships and he's placed every time but I can't remember the placings and I don't want to ask him because that would be kinda awkward. He loves to lift, a lot more than me. He is super jacked and we lift every day. There's a tiny little rec center place that we go to and it costs $30 a month and they don't even have a real bench or squat rack... It's ok though, we still go hard with what we've got. We get up at 5 every morning, go and lift for 2 hours, then we shower and get ready at the rec center because we live 15 miles outta town so we don't go back to where we live until we're done for the night. After we are done lifting and getting dressed we go to the church to study and eat breakfast. We have permission to leave all our food in the fridge in the church and so we've got a pretty good setup, until we go home for the night and we're hungry and can't eat anything because all our food is elsewhere... We have to drive on a dirt road and through a stream to get to where we live, which is in the basement of a member's house. We've got a Nissan Frontier which is easily the best car you can get in this mission. It's awesome, I've fallen in love with it and now I want a truck. Because Elder Ewart's last companion never had his driving info sent in, Elder Ewart had to drive the whole time he was with him. So Elder Ewart has let me drive everyday so far. One time I drove really fast through the stream and it was really fun. Then I got an aggressive driving infraction so I guess I won't be doing that again :( 

So the first night that I was here we got a call from our district leader, Elder Mo'unga (or just Mo), and he wanted to have an exchange the very next day. He had just gotten a brand new companion too and he wanted to give him some shotgunning (normally one missionary stays in an area because they know the area but when both missionaries are new to the area it's called shotgunning) experience. So I went to Houston, Texas (county) for the day with Elder Dye. He's pretty cool. The plan that Elder Mo had for us was just tracting but Elder Dye and I hate tracting so we just drove around a lot so that Elder Dye could get to know the area and we did a lot of talking, mostly about girls, and then that night we stayed up really late talking about girls again. So as ya'll can tell it was really fun. 

Our district is probably the best district in the mission. We've got Elder Mo and Dye, myself and Ewart and then Sisters Merril and Burt. Sister Burt was in my district in the MTC and Sis Merril is really chill, she even hooked Elder Ewart up with one of her friends who's really pretty. Elder Dye is really cool and Elder Mo is nuts! There are a lot of stories about Elder Mo that I could tell. All I'm gonna say is that he's been emergency transferred a LOT of times. He's basically a crazy poly who has a free spirit, and does whatever he wants. He's so stinking funny. We have district outing every Monday and yesterday it was a blast. Elder Mo made everybody think he was getting sent home and everybody believed him it was so funny. One guy smashed his drink because he was ticked haha. We blew up a ton of balloons and then put them in the Sister's car while they were emailing and Mo wrote stuff on their windows with window chalk. It was a jolly good time, until we were leaving and discovered that Mo had also written a bunch of stuff on our truck with the chalk. There were two big swastikas on our windshield and a bunch of other stuff that I think is in Polynesian because I can't read it. We erased the swastikas but sadly all the other stuff is still there.

Well things are going really good so far so I think that I'm gonna have a great time here in Ava. Also I have a good amount of pictures that I'm going to sen but the library here doesn't let you plug things into their computer, so eventually ya'll will get some good pictures.

Everybody stay classy!

Elder Naegle

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Transfers!

So nothing really happened at all this last week. I'm pretty sure our lessons were under 10. Pretty pathetic I know. But we got transfer calls on Saturday and of course my companion is going home (thank goodness) and I am getting transferred to Ava Missouri. I'm going to be replacing my MTC companion who has been there since we came out. My new companion is going to be an Elder Ewart who is from Delta Utah and he's a wrestler. He also really likes to lift weights and from what my MTC companion tells me, he is a hard worker. So I am very excited. A lot of people in our ward think that it's dumb that we are getting shotgunned out (apparently it happens a lot in that ward) but I know the reason why, it's because my companion and I ran the area into the ground. We literally had no progressing investigators and we weren't doing anything to find new ones. The new missionaries will hopefully turn the area around. There's so much potential there it's sickening. I felt so embarrassed every time people were telling us we were great missionaries and when they were thanking us for serving there. Just two days left thankfully. I'm so grateful that I'm getting transferred. This last transfer has definitely been the most trying for me.

Well there's really nothing else to say. Just pray that we find a ride to transfer point on Thursday.

Elder Naegle

March 16th

Well same as last week. Nothing has really happened at all. Zone conference was really good except I couldn't stay awake during President's final talk which made me so mad because those are always so good. Went to a baptism with Bro Gossett and he said it answered some questions for him. The only thing holding him back right now is smoking so we're gonna do the stop smoking workshop with him. He came to sacrament meeting again yesterday. I hit my six month mark the other day. Time flies when you're having fun... Basically right now I'm just waiting for my companion to go home so I can get a new one.

Elder Naegle

The Price of discipleship

Well this week was pretty lame and nothing really happened until Wednesday. Pretty much Springfield has not been all that great since I got here. So on Wednesday the zone leaders came to district meeting and had interviews with everyone. They asked how I was doing and I promptly told them that I was not doing all that great and so we had a discussion about me and my companion and obedience and the Spirit and what I could do. Basically there are a lot of things that we've been doing that are things we shouldn't be doing. Mostly just trivial things, nothing serious. For example there's this less active from the YSA who basically hangs out with us all day on Monday because he gives us rides places. He usually hangs out in our apartment and in all the other Elders' apartments. The zone leaders informed me that that is not ok. My companion has been out for 23 months and he didn't know that. Also getting up on time. My companion has not gotten up on time since I got here I think. Unfortunately I have given in and followed suit more often than I should have. So this last week I have been trying really hard to be more obedient and it's a struggle because I really do not feel like my companion supports me in this cause. I have brought up to him more than once about not having this less active in our apartment and he won't disagree with me but he doesn't agree with me. I have struggled a lot with anger towards my companion which is not ok. I even cleaned up the apartment while my companion was taking a nap during companionship study time because the zone leaders told me that they didn't feel the spirit in our apartment when they dropped by a couple of weeks ago. So I have started to feel a lot better since I've started actively trying to do what's right. We even wore proselyting clothes today because I decided to put them on and my companion followed suit.

In other news, we finally had a lesson with Bro Gossett. He is really sincere and he really wants to get baptized. He has some issues like smoking but that shouldn't be a problem. He feels like he's the worst sinner in the world. He came to sacrament meeting though and he shaved his scraggly beard! He made the comment that the church didn't burn down so that shows what he thinks of himself but I'm hoping it also means that he thinks that he's getting better so yeah. He's awesome. None of our other investigators are progressing that well. It's spring break this week so a lot of people are going to be gone. 

Sorry about the depressing stuff, it will all work out. It's good to have trials because that means that the Lord thinks you're worthy of them and he's improving you. It was interesting, we have the First Presidency and the Quorum of the 12 on our wall and on the back of the pictures it gives a brief synopsis of the person's life. They are all very amazing and they all have very impressive resumes you could say. It's neat how they gave up all of it to serve the Lord full time, especially because I'm very positive they have all made a LOT of money in their lives. It's cool because all of that is a reflection of who they are and all their hard work. So everybody work hard! Work is something we should actively seek out because those who avoid work are usually pretty big losers, and nobody wants to be a loser. 

That's all that I've got for this week, but we did hear a tornado alarm, it was just a testing though. There's a lady with a mustache at a gas station we frequent. For the first time in my life I was offered a cigarette. There's a sister in my district who was roommates with Allie Borzoni. There's also a lady in my ward whose nephew is Tyler Brown so it's a pretty small world. Zone conference is on Friday and I'm super excited. It will be nice because we'll only have to drive like 20 minutes to the Springfield stake center instead of 4 hours.

Love, 

Elder Naegle

Moving Slowly

This week was super boring and nothing really happened. My companion and I have been moving super slowly and we probably haven't been that diligent in working. But we are committed to work hard and do better this week.

Nothing really happened this week. It snowed again and like 3 of the 5 wards that meet in our building cancelled church on Sunday and we only had sacrament meeting. It's funny because all the roads were plowed and all the ice was melted so I don't really know why they cancelled church. 

One cool thing that happened was that we got a call from the mission office and there was a guy who was in a really bad car accident and he broke his neck and he was going into surgery on Thursday. So his sister-in-law is a member in Arizona and she called the mission office and they called us and we went over and gave him a blessing. So maybe when he gets better he'll start taking the lessons. Speaking of hospitals there are two HUGE hospitals here like 20 minutes away from each other. I don't really remember ever seeing hospitals this big let alone 20 minutes away from each other, in Utah so that's a new experience for me. People here must just need a lot of help health-wise. 

We got some media referrals both wanting a bible. On one of them the name was Tinder Fagwarrior, so we're pretty sure that's a hoax or something. We went over once and nobody answered so we'll probably go over some other day and see what's up. The other guy was actually there and he was a total loser. Elder Woodbrey asked him what religion he was and he said Christian, which is dumb because I'm pretty sure Christianity is more of a belief than a religion. He didn't want to learn more about the Book of Mormon or anything and I'm pretty sure he was high when he requested a Bible because he kept thinking (out loud) that he put in his other address (he's living with his girlfriend). 

In other news: One night a bunch of firetrucks and ambulances came to right outside our apartment complex and when I went outside they were all gone and it smelled like something was burning. We saw a house on fire today on the way to lunch. Every time we go by Krispy Kreme and the light is on we stop and get a free doughnut. This morning I bought a box of a dozen and it was a bad idea. I also broke a shoe lace. 

Well this is probably the lamest email I've ever written but I hope you all have a good week, I will try to not slip on the (non-existent) ice that everybody in Springfield is afraid of. 

Love, Elder Naegle