Week 24

Monday January 19

Today was a pretty good pday! We went hiking in walnut canyon for district activity! It was fun to get together with everyone and hang out! We taught Travis Grantham part of the Plan of Salvation which went really well! We extended a baptismal date and nothing we extended seemed to be a good day so we invited him to pray about a baptismal date so we will see how it goes!

Tuesday January 20

Freddie took us to lunch to Route 66 diner! We headed out to ash fork to give a Book of Mormon to a referral. Herby isn't interested in meeting with us but in reading the Book of Mormon but you never know maybe he will be sometime! We had dinner at the London's which was really good breakfast food. Crêpes and breakfast casserole! Super good! We taught Califia the first half of the Plan of Salvation which went really well she is having some guilt with reading the Book of Mormon because she has been taught all her life not to but I have faith that she will continue to progress! We headed to Bellemont for exchanges and I brought Elder Ockey to Williams!!!

Wednesday January 21

Had loads of fun with Elder Ockey today! We get along super well and are really similar! We went out and did service at Barbara Wilson's house! So much fun we got to smash windows in the dumpster with a hammer and had to push an atv from her lower property to her upper property and it had a flat tire! So so tiring but a great memory I'll never forget! We shared a quick message with Josh and Nicole because they were sick so we taught them at the door for a few minutes! We ate dinner at Macdons! We taught the Paynes which went extremely well! We taught the first half of the Plan of Salvation! It made sense and we talked a lot about baptism! We will see if we can get them on date soon! Elder Ockey and I teach very well together! We exchanged back after a great day!

Thursday January 22

We had housing inspections and weekly planning today. We were asked to help a new member in our ward move in. So we rescheduled our dinner to 4 and it turned out that they weren't going to move in until the next morning so we sat at our apartment waiting to be picked up to go help for about a half hour before we were told. Pretty boring day. 

Friday January 23

We went to flag this morning to relieve our family search training which was awesome! Learned a lot and found some family names! We had district meeting where we learned about becoming master teachers and master finders! We had to get our oil changed in flag so we didn't get back to Williams until 5:15 and after dinner we taught Robert the first half of the Plan of Salvation which went really well talked a lot about baptism and extended a date to him but he wants to be ready before he will committ to a date. We had the doughnut challenge at the Flannery's but I was not hungry at all so I failed miserably and only ate two doughnuts! Elder Meisenbacher ate 11 but not close enough to Elder Parkinson's record of 18 pretty good day!

 

Saturday January 24

Today when we were headed to online time we got a text from Freddie letting us know he was expecting us for lunch which was not a concrete plan so we had 2 lunches today... We made visits up highway 64 and then tracted a little bit when we got back. We had dinner at the Adams and made visits to end the night. Pretty boring day. 

Sunday January 25

Today we had ward correlation which was good! We spoke in church which went really well I actually was running out of time so I had to summarize the last half of my talk I spoke for about 15 minutes probably could have for at least 25 minutes! Califia dropped us today she said she feels like she if furthering herself from God by meeting with us... She said that she will still read the Book of Mormon and pray about it though. We had dinner at the Smith's and taught the Christiansen's. We received a referral from salt lake and will contact her tomorrow hopefully!

 

Love you all,

Elder Ashby

 

Pictures from our hike to Walnut Canyon in Sedona

 

Week 23

Hello all,

We have had a wonderful week here in Williams.  The work is really starting to progress.  We had quite a few teaching opportunities this week.  We were able to teach Califia, Nathan, Travis Grantham, Tommy and Shira, and Robert.  The last three are new investigators.  Tommy and Shira are referrals from our Bishop.  Their lesson went very well.  We were able to teach them in their home and also had a member there with us teaching them.  We were set to have them come over for a tour of the Church and teach another lesson, but their daughter came down with Strep.  We are excited to continue to get to know them and teach them the gospel.  Nathan is an investigator that we tracted out.  We taught him a lesson this week and it went so, so.  We will see what happens as we try and go back and visit him.

This is the most active investigators that we have had since I have been here.  It is great to see the work progressing.

Sorry the letter is so short this week, but we are having a district activity so we have to go and have some fun today!

Love you all,
Elder Ashby

This weeks message from Sister Flannery of the Williams Ward:
We decided that if Elder Ashby wasn't names Elder Ute, we would have ended up calling him Elder Energy for sure.  He is truly the most energetic Elder we've seen!  And the best part is he's always in such a good mood that he's just a pure delight to be around.  Even though him and Elder Meisenbacher are sooo different, he handles it extremely well and in the few short weeks Elder M has been here, he has gone from scared to death to happy and contributing.  I'm always sad when transfers hit, but when they ship off Elder Ute, it will probably be a full blown tantrum. LOL

So as you probably know, Terrence is a special needs boy and sits between the Elders at Church every week.  He popped in during "ladies night" with his Grandma while the Elders were here and he was elated to see them...

And yes the pics are them tweaking (heaven help us, LOL).

BTW, Danny (Sis Flannery's husband) got him laughing his head off the other night with a friendly BYU/Utah banter which ended with Danny saying, "Elder, what color is the Book of Mormon?  See Utah isn't true."  He got Elder Ute hard, he laughed for 5 minutes.

Video of the weather in Williams

Week 22

Hello all,

What a week we have had here in Williams.  Things seem to be picking up here with our investigator pool.  We are working hard to build that and help people progress.  We had tracted into Nathan some time ago and haven't been able to meet with him and we got back in touch with him and set an appointment for this week.  We also had a referral from our Bishop, her name is Shira.  I will update more on those new investigators as we meet with them.

On a bit of a sad note.  We are postponing Brittany's baptism from this Saturday.  We found out Wednesday that her and Travis are getting divorced and that Travis is back in Jail.  We hope that Brittany understands that this was for her and not just cause Travis and her were together.  We will continue to try and meet with her and do what we can to help.

We were able to meet with the Payne family again and the meeting went very well.  We have another appointment with them on Wednesday this week.  This is a entire family...dad, mom and 2 kids.  We are excited that we can meet with them and teach them the gospel.  I love it when we can teach an entire family.

We often go over to a ward members home, The Grantham's, to share messages.  The father is the only one that is not a member of the  church.  We asked him if we could start sharing the missionary lessons with him and he accepted.  So another investigator this week. 

Califa had to cancel her appointment with us this week, but we have a reschedule for Tuesday.  She is continuing to do well.

I am feeling pretty good as a trainer.  We have had some good opportunities this week to teach and find new investigators.  We taught 16 lessons overall.  Elder Meisenbacher is starting to do a bit better on teaching and if we continue to teach this many lessons he will get better and better.  He is making great improvements.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Love you all,
Elder Ashby

Message from Sister Flannery to Steve and Sonia Ashby:
I am bursting with pride with what a leader Elder Ute has become!  I sat last week in Ward Council and watched him humbly take the bull by the horns and completely step up to the plate.  He also bore a very sweet testimony that resonated my soul and many others there!  Enough so that we talked about it in Young Women's as well.  He was strong, but humble and so loving.  He is truly being a strong leader and an incredibly hard worker!  It is just so cool and I wish you could be here to witness it, you would be proud.

This picture shows how happy they are!  I loved it!  It was after Church on Sunday...

Week 21

Hello all,

Well a new week and a new year.  Welcome 2015!  So with the new year comes new challenges.  As I mentioned I am now training a new missionary.  His name is Elder Meisenbacher.  He is from South Jordan, Utah.  He is the second oldest of 5 boys and one girl.  His older brother is serving in the Mesa, AZ mission and has 6 months left to serve.  He and I are completely opposite of each other.  While I like sports, he described himself as being a nerd in school.  It doesn't bother me that we don't have a ton in common, it just make our conversations a bit tougher to come up with.  I am sure that this will be a learning experience for me.  We are studying hard right now.  Elder Meisenbacher is still learning the lessons and how to teach, so I have been carrying the lessons that we teach.  This opportunity is helping me grow and be a better teacher.

This week was pretty much introducing the new missionary to the ward members and getting him aquatinted with life in the mission field.  It is quite different than Utah or the MTC.  I picked him up on New Year's Eve and we ended up staying in Phoenix due to the 14 inches of snow we received in Williams.  The Mission President thought it would be a good idea to stay since there would be crazy drivers all over the roads as well.  So we ended up staying with the AP's (Assistant to the President) and 4 Elders from our District.  We ended up playing cards that night and really having a good time.  We drove back to Williams on New Years Day and stayed in and set up Elder Meisenbacher's iPad.  Went to the Flannery's for lunch.

Brittany is still on schedule for Baptism for Jan 17.  We need to meet with her more and more over the next couple of weeks to keep her on track.  We also have an appointment with the Payne family.  It has been awhile since we have met with them, so we are hoping to spark some interest back there.  We have an appointment with Califia for Wednesday as well.  Remember to keep all of them in your prayers.  Every prayer helps.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Love you all,
Elder Ashby

Pictures of Elder Meisenbacher...