March 31, 2015

Hey Family,

I hope you guys are having a good spring break! I heard the Utes lost to Duke and I was so mad! Well at least they made it to the sweet 16! Elder Gardner and I are getting pumped for General Conference coming up this week! We can't wait to hear Elder Holland go nuts on everyone!! General Conference is so awesome as a missionary because you're so in tune with the Spirit and all of the talks just hit you so hard! I am definitely going to miss the eggs Benedict but maybe Elder Gardner and I can give it our best effort to cook it!

Anyway, this week wasn't the best week. We lost the two baptism dates that we had with Raina and Elena... Raina hasn't been to church twice yet and her baptism date is in two weeks, and since it's General Conference it will be impossible for her to go to church twice before her baptism date. Elena said that her report card came out and she is grounded because she got some bad grades... I don't know why a mom would ground her for something that's so good for her but there's not really much we can do about it. But luckily we will probably be able to set new ones with them in the future and continue to help them progress! With Cheryl, she is still investigating but she hasn't really said anything about baptism lately, so this week we are going to talk to her about what her thoughts are about baptism and hopefully we can set a date with her soon! It's getting a lot warmer here and we are loving it! I've heard that summers here are brutally hot! I bought a Ukulele a couple weeks ago and I'm learning how to play it! Haha I've learned how to play a couple hymns on it and it's pretty sweet!

I love all of you guys and I'm grateful for everything that you all do! Thanks for all the love and support! Keep living righteously and making the right choices! I'll talk to you all later!

Love Elder Summerhays

March 24, 2015

Hey Family,

I heard the Utes are playing Duke in the sweet sixteen!!! That's so sweet, I wish I could watch it I bet you guys were going nuts when they beat Georgetown! That's awesome that you guys are still reading the Book of Mormon every night, keep it up! Hope Liv had a good time at Morp, I miss dances! This week was pretty good, a lot of crazy stuff happened! We weren't able to teach Raina or Elena this week which kinda stunk, but we did have a couple lessons with Cheryl! They are having some really bad family problems, and Sarah has a horrible relationship with her parents. The other day she yelled at a teacher while she was at school, because of an assignment that the teacher gave her. Cheryl just came to the school and picked her up and she didn't have to do the assignment! She has no discipline at all, and she gets whatever she wants. It's pretty bad! Cheryl was complaining to us about how rude Sarah acts and she wonders what the problem is, but it's mostly her fault... But oh well, the Gospel can solve any problem that they or anyone else has so we're going to keep working with her!

We also have a less active guy in our ward named Mike Bosen. We have been working with him forever and he is kind of a weird guy. We usually go over to his house in the evening time and just share messages with him. He is struggling with a lot of things in his life and we are trying so hard to help him realize the potential that he has and what is in store after this life for those who are faithful! It is so hard because he just doesn't understand how important his actions are every day! It truly is amazing though how as missionary's you really gain Christlike love for those you serve. I want Mike to become active so bad, and Christlike love leads you to do whatever you can to help people accept the Gospel! I am hoping that as we continue to work with him, he will realize that he needs the Gospel in his life and he will realize the importance of it!

This week we also had a pretty funny experience while tracting. So we knock on this door, and a guy with a giant beard comes to the door and says "How's it going guys?" and we talked to him and told him who we were and all that stuff, and he said " We're doing stand up comedy and drinking in the back yard do you wanna join us? Do you drink?" and we told him no, but we could do some stand up comedy! So he was like "Woooo!" and he walked us to the backyard where there were a couple drunk guys, and they started clapping and handing us a microphone and told us to tell some jokes. So we did our best but it was a poor effort. So after a little while we just started asking them what they knew about Mormons! Some of them said "They have magic underwear!" "They were polygamists!" "They are the Judaism of Christians!" And we were just talking to them and explaining what our actual beliefs are, and they were drunk out of their minds so I'm sure they didn't really remember it but then we left and they all clapped as we walked out the door haha!

Anyways, missionary work is amazing and I wouldn't trade any of these weird, crazy, awesome experiences for the world! Hope you all are staying safe and doing the right things, I love you guys!

Love Elder Summerhays

                                         Saw this while tracting, haha

March 17, 2015

Dear Family,

So Elder Gardner's dad sent him the tourney bracket so we got to see who's playing who. Hopefully the Utes can pull through with a victory over SF Austin, too bad we're going to miss it but you'll have to tell me how it goes! Thanks Dad for the email about always trying to be better! I've learned that no matter where you're at, you can always get better! The devil is so deceiving, like it says in 2 Nephi, he leads us by the neck with a flaxen chord. He will make a small bad thing seem ok to do then he will keep leading us to do more things, and more things until he has us bound with his strong chords. We need to always be improving, and changing, and always studying, and working, and staying humble so that he can't even get that first flaxen chord around our necks. Anyways, Sarah got baptized this week!! It was an awesome baptism and the Spirit was there so strong! Sarah's parents are not members but her mom, Cheryl, is considering being baptized as she comes to know that it is true and what she needs to be doing. Elder Gardner and I are really going to work with her this week on helping her get that witness from the Holy Ghost, she has great fellowship which is super helpful and we feel like in the near future she will be baptized! After the baptism we talked with Sarah about how she felt, and she said that she was really nervous the whole entire time, even when she was stepping into the water, but she said the second she went under and came back up, all of it went away and she felt like a completely different person! It was so awesome to hear that and to be a part of bringing another person into the kingdom! Elena is doing really well! We set a baptism date with her this week for April 18th, Bamuel's birthday! She hasn't come to church yet but we are working on finding someone who could give her a ride so that she can be there! She enjoys learning about the Church and we are confident that she will be baptized on her date! We didn't get the chance to meet with Ruth last week, but we are trying to get an appointment with her for this week! Things are going great and I'm loving every second of every day! Keep doing the right things and stay safe! Love you all, and GO UTES!!!!!

Love Elder Summerhays

March 10, 2015

Hey Family,

I'm pretty bummed that I won't get to watch the Utes play in march madness this year. You'll have to tell me how they do! Who do they play first? Oh and there's a lady in one of the wards in our stake that wants to know if I'm related to a Joyce Summerhays? I told her I have no idea. Anyways, this week was good. We got to teach a lot more which is great! Sarah Loy's baptism is this week on Saturday so we are super pumped about that!! We also got a couple new investigators this week. The first one is Ruth Jenson, she was a referral that a member from another ward gave us, but she is golden! We went over to teach her and she had a ton of questions! In the past she has been Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbytarian, and another protestant church haha, so she is definitely searching for the truth! We taught her about the Book of Mormon and about the Restoration and she loved it! She came to church this week and she said it was wonderful haha, so we are going to set a baptism date with her this week as well! We also met another girl named Elena who lives in our apartment complex. We met her dad (Albert) while we were out talking to people and he said he would love to hear a message about Jesus Christ, he also said his wife would probably not be interested but his daughter would! So we went back to their house and Albert wasn't there but his wife Lorena was and so was Elena, so they came outside and we taught a lesson at a little picnic table in our complex! It was pretty cool and Elena said she wants to know more, so we are going to continue to teach her! Raina still has a baptism date on April 11 and she is still good to go with that, so we are excited about that too! But yeah that's basically it for the week! I also hit my 6 month mark this week and burned a tie so that was awesome, I'll send pictures of it! Anyways I love all of you and hope you are all staying safe! Talk to you later!

Love Elder Summerhays

                         Elder Summerhays burning a tie to mark 6 months in ABQ

March 2, 2015

Hey Family,

So transfers happened and Me and Elder Gardner are both staying in Cherry Hills! Haha I've been here for a whopping 6 months and I love it!! That's sweet that Ann can try out for Vykelles this year, I heard Riss is trying out for SYTYCD this next week! Crazy! I remember playing golf for Viewmont in Junior High, it was the best!! This week was good we did get a ton of snow and it was awesome!! I usually don't like snow but I miss it and I've always dreamed of doing missionary work in the snow so that was awesome! We taught more lessons than usual which is always great, we didn't get any new investigators which was kind of a bummer. We are still teaching Sarah Loy whose baptism date is on the 14th! She is only 13 and she just went through a concussion so she has a tough time comprehending a lot of the stuff we teach, so this week Elder Gardner and I got a bunch of props together and got some of the young women in the ward to come with us and acted out 1Nephi 3 and 4 where Nephi and his brothers have to go back and get the plates from Laban! Haha it was goofy but it helped her understand it so that was good! And Sarah's mom Cheryl is actually thinking about baptism too so that's good, we are hoping to set a bap date with her soon! We also started teaching this less active guy who wants to start taking the discussions because he has problems with alcohol and smoking and some other stuff, so we went over there on Saturday to teach him and he was drunk out of his mind! He answered the door and he thought it was 2 in the morning but it was 8 at night... So we went in and just talked to him for a while and his house was a complete wreck, there were probably 50 cigarettes on the ground no kidding, and there was trash everywhere and it reeked like smoke in there, so we just decided to save the lesson for another time and just talked to him! Raina came to church this week which we were pumped about, and we have an appointment scheduled with Rudd for next week so that should go well! But that's about it for my week! I love you all and I am loving it out here!! Keep doing the right things, and keep reading that Book of Mormon! Talk to you next week!

Love Elder Summerhays

                                We got snow, reminds me of home