January 27, 2015

Hey Familia,

It sounds like everyone is doing good! Thanks Dad for that awesome story about the high council! It's super cool how many miracles are really happening around us today. It's also so amazing that we each have the privilege of receiving our own personal revelation. We have the privilege of receiving guidance from the person that knows the end from the beginning, the person that created us, along with the heavens and the earth! All we have to do is ask and do our part to receive it! Thanks Mom for your email as well, you're right this is the most important thing that any of us can do in life and it's amazing to be able to do it right now! So this week was pretty good we got to teach Avram a couple times and we set his baptism date earlier to Feb 7 haha! So we will be baptizing him in a week!! We are super pumped and excited for him! We also are teaching a family of 3 named the Loy's. It's two parents and a 13 year old daughter. The dad's name is David the mom's name is Cheryl and the daughter's name is Sarah! We have taught them a couple lessons and they are coming to church so that's awesome, the next step will be to set a baptism date which we are hoping to do sometime this week! Other than that, we have gone tracting a TON this week and there are some insane people who answer the door haha! But it's all worth it when you get that one nice person who will let us talk and teach them! We are working on finding new investigators so that we can teach more! Holy we just got a text from President Miller that said Elder Holland will be coming to the mission!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Elder Gardner and I are freaking out right now haha!! Anyways I love you all and hope you are all doing well! Keep being awesome and CTR!

Love Elder Summerhays

January 21, 2015 (Baptism!!)

Hey Family!

It sounds like everything is going well, hopefully Bar has fully recovered from his sickness. Who does everyone want to win the Super Bowl? It stinks that the Panthers lost to the Seahawks. The Utes are killing it this year!! Are they going to be in the March Madness tourney? I'm a little rusty on the "Gru" voice but I'll try to gain it back so I sound a "leetle beet less like a zombie." That's going to be sweet when the day comes that Dad and Mom go on a mission!! Anyways, as you can tell by the subject, this week we had a baptism!!!! It was the most amazing spiritual experience of my life!! I got to baptize Randy which was awesome! I will send you guys some pics! We also set another baptism date this week with a guy named Avram, he was the miracle story that I talked about last week! We said "We have prayed about it and we think that you can be ready to be baptized by February 21st!" and he said "Really I was thinking earlier than that!" Hahaha it was so sweet!! So he is definitely going to be baptized, and he is going to be a strong member of the Church! We also taught a new investigator named Michelle this week, she has 2 kids and we taught her the Restoration and invited her to baptism, she said she would read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and she said she had to think about some things as well! So we are going to teach her again this week and hopefully we can set a baptism date! Other than that, did some tracting this week and that's always fun! But I love you all so much and I hope everything is going well, the mission is really starting to fly by and I'm realizing more and more that I don't have very much time to be set apart as a missionary. It's sad but I'm going to enjoy it while I am out here! I love it so much and I am so happy to be a missionary!! Keep doing the right things and I'll talk to you later!

Love Elder Summerhays

                                                   

                                                           Randy's Baptism

Elder Summerhays with his new Buzz Cut

January 13, 2015

Hi Family!

First of all I want to thank everyone who sends me letters weekly! It means the world to me to get a weekly letter from you all! I appreciate it more than you know! It sounds like you guys are doing pretty good this week. I got Jesus the Christ, and thank you so much because everyone and their dog is reading it, and says it's the best ever! Anyways this week was pretty good! Randy's baptism is this week and we are pumped!!!! He is getting baptized this Saturday and he says that he wants me to baptize him!! When he said that ,I almost started crying because the Spirit was so strong and I was so happy!! We can't wait to baptize him and we can't wait to see the awesome effect it will have on his life! This is what a mission is all about, seeing Randy grow and come to know Jesus Christ and HeavenlyFather has been the most amazing thing on the planet!! I love being a missionary and I know Heavenly Father wants me here! While me and elder Gardner were on exchanges this week he and elder Yates, one of our zone leaders, were just tracting and they got a call from our Bishop and he was at the church watching a priest's basketball game, and he said that someone came up to him and he just started asking questions about the church! So Bishop called elder Gardner and said that there was someone at the church that wanted to know more about the Gospel and Elder Gardner and Elder Yates taught him for like 2 hours about almost everything about our church!! It was crazy and he said he would be baptized once he knows it's true! It's awesome! His name is Avrim and he asks a TON of questions which is great! We can't wait to keep teaching him and eventually baptize him! Anyways besides that, that's about our week! I love all of you and I hope you're staying safe and doing the right things! Thanks for all the support and love that you all give me, it means the world!! Talk to you later!

Love Elder Summerhays

Here is a picture of me and one of my zone leaders, Elder Pope, burning ties to put 2014 in the past, at a zone training!

January 6, 2015

Hey Family,

So I can say that this week was the hardest week on my mission... Thanks everyone for the emails I love you guys so much and I appreciate it more than you know!  Being a missionary strengthens you more than I can even say.  Heavenly Father is real, he's there. He knows and loves each and every one of us better than we know and love ourselves. He is our Father and he wants us to become like Him, and the only way we can do that is if we go through trials and pains and suffering, and make sacrifices. When I accepted my mission call I accepted all that comes with it, I accepted to leave behind all other personal affairs, I accepted to sacrifice all of the old habits that I had and to become sanctified. The past 4 months have been so amazing and I have learned more than I have in my entire life. I know that the Lord needs me here and I know what I have been called to do. I know that whatever his plan is for me that it will be the one that makes me the most happy whether I know it or not. I know that there are people out here that need me and I am going to give it my heart, might, mind, and strength! Anyways, haha This week we got quite a few new investigators! One of them is a family which is great, I've never taught a family anymore and it's super cool! Hopefully we can baptize all of them! We ate dinner at their house a couple nights ago and it went really well, we were able to share a message at the end and they loved it and said we could come back! We are eating dinner with them again on Saturday so hopefully we can set a baptism date with them and continue to teach them! Randy is going to get baptized in two weeks!! We are so excited for him and we can't wait to see his face when he comes out of the font! He reads the scriptures every day and he loves every bit of them! We also found another investigator named michelle, we just found her as we were going around knocking on doors and we knocked on hers and we told her who we were and we shared a scripture and prayed with her and she said we could come back, so we are going to go back and teach her this week! Other than that we didn't get to teach Ilva cause she told us to come back this week so we are going to teach her sometime this week! Elder Gardner and I are doing so great together and we are both loving it! I think my district took in the district meeting pretty well because the key indicators this week skyrocketed!! Hopefully they can all keep it up! I love each and every one of you and I hope all is well! We get to go golfing today so that's sweet! We hit range balls last p-day and it was SO good to get back on the course! Anyways, talk to you later!

Love Elder Summerhays