Tucson--#12

Hey Everyone!!

Chris and Alexia's baptism was awesome!!!!!!! Yvonne, who is the wife gave the talk on baptism and holy ghost. It was a great talk! You could tell that she was talking from the heart and not just reading some scriptures and explaining what they meant. She was grateful that Chris and Alexia were making this first step on their way to being sealed as a family in the temple! I ended up baptism Chris and Elder Woodland baptized Alexia. We were the second baptism of the morning so the font was rather cold. Alexia was shivering a little bit. I was nervous out of my mind to baptize Chris. I felt the spirit so strongly and I know that I was performing a saving ordinance of the Gospel. I am seeing D&C 18 start applying to my life. I have now experienced the joy of seeing not one but two people come unto Christ and now I want to get the entire city to come unto Christ. Maybe I should dust off my soap box and go to work! :) There was a pretty good turnout from the ward given that it was Thanksgiving weekend. The EQP and PP attended which was good for Chris and Alexia to get that support. After the baptism Chris asked if we could do the confirmation on Sunday. He asked me to confirm Alexia and Elder Woodland to confirm himself. Man, I thought the Spirit was strong at the baptism? Boy was I mistaken! After church we talked with the Otero's about the confirmation. They both noticed a change. Chris was more able to describe it. He said that he felt more at peace with his decision and knew that he was making the right decision. Hopefully, he gets the Aaronic priesthood next week or the week after so he can start administering the Sacrament. The ward is real supportive of us but we are still not getting any referrals from the ward. I hope that the ward notices that we are serious about missionary work, given that in the last 2 months we have had 4 baptisms. This Saturday we are meeting with the ward mission leader and are going to create a ward mission plan focused on member work. Member work is crucial to our success because tracting has gotten us no where with investigators. Elder Foster emphasized this when he visited that members are the ones who are supposed to find people so we can teach them. He told us that we need to make sure that the ward understands how easy missionary work can be, it all starts with a single invitation. Because we lost our two strongest investigators, we are going to focus strongly on finding new investigators. We are going to have multiple FHE's with ward members this week and hopefully get them pumped up for missionary work! One of our Thanksgiving dinners had to cancel so we ended up having dessert in the morning and two full meals in the afternoon. I was stuffed! (no pun intended) One of the families was the Samson's, who are less active and we baptized their 9 year old daughter, Ahdryanna last month. I feel like Christmas time is going to be the best time for missionary work. With the mormon.org/Christmas page and with the ward's help we should have enormous success in our area. That is so cool that Emma Hunt got her mission call! She is going to be a phenominal missionary! The field truly is white and is ready to harvest but the labourers are few and that needs to change and will change with the lower mission age. There should be an excess of labourers

Love,

Elder Urry

LiveStrong

D&C 76:22-24

Tucson--#11

Hey Everyone!

This week has been awesome! Chris and Alexia Otero are getting baptized on Saturday!! They are completely solid investigators. Chris keeps bringing up getting sealed in the temple and also being sealed to immediate family. Chris asked me to baptize him. I am so nervous. This will be my first "real" baptism, one that I was there for their entire progression. Words cannot express my happiness! We have had trouble getting members to fellowship because of stake conference or they could only come to Sacrament meeting. We are planning on a big turnout for their baptism because we have really gotten the word out. Tonight we are having a family home evening activity with the Oteros and Neumillers (bishop's family) at the church. Alexia is the smartest 9 year old I have ever seen. She told us that she wants to serve a mission like us! We taught Ramon the Restoration and he came to church which is awesome! We extended a baptism invitation but he did not seem to like that. He has said that he knows that the church is true but if he gets baptized 'mormon' he is going to get baptized in every other church. We have a little obstacle that we need to overcome with Ramon but with the Lord's help I know that it will happen. We taught Patricia the Plan of Salvation and gave her the D&C video so she could watch Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration. She loves the story of Joseph Smith! We have not extended a baptismal invite to her but we are going to during our next lesson. She is hesitant about being baptized but we are going to relate setting a baptismal date to running a marathon. If you want to run a marathon but do not set a date, you are not going to prepare yourself that well. Whereas, if you signed up to run a marathon next month, by golly you are going to be running your heart out to prepare for the marathon next month. The half-mission conference with Elder Foster was really good! He expounded on Elder Holland's remarks during stake conference last week. Elder Holland in his usual self, called out all Arizona members about not being good missionaries. He said that tracting is a dated tactic and that member missionary work is going to lead to the most success from here on out. Elder Foster taught us how to better utilize the members and get them fired up for missionary work. The church is doing a website page all about Christmas. it is http://www.mormon.org/Christmas It officially opens up on Nov. 26th I think but members can still get on that webpage to paroose around. Chris and Alexia Otero, Patricia Vespoli, Ramon Gonzales, Kapua Subica, Ahryanna Samson have all been referrals whether member referrals or self-referrals. Elder Foster enlightened us on how missions are selected. A member of the 70, an Apostle and someone from the missionary department go into a room. There are two screens. On one screen appears your face, name, etc and your application with bishop and stake presidents recommendations. The apostle ponders over your picture and if Pres. Eyring is doing it he actually talks aloud to you :) They pretty much say, "Elder Urry, you are a fine young man and the Lord wants you to serve in Arizona. Wow that is close to San Diego but it does not matter that is where the Lord wants you." Then on the second screen pops up all the missions in Arizona or wherever it may be. They say, "You are wanted in the Arizona Tucson mission" They click the mission on the screen and walla your mission has been assigned. I am looking forward to this week. We have found out some PM families in the ward whose husbands have come to church every week for the last year or so but have not been baptized. We will get them baptized, if it's God's will, which I am sure that it is. Kind of reminds me of Brother Thompson who came to church for forever before he got baptized. And we got a unbaptized childrens list (9 or older) and are going to follow up on those as well. I am going to take my own spin on a famous Gen Conf quote from October. I am a Missionary. I know it. I live it. I LOVE it! I would not change anything in the world from right now.

Love you all!

Elder Urry

LiveStrong

Alma 26:22

Tucson--#10

Hey Everyone!
First things first, they found Brother Wilkinson! Thank goodness! I
honestly thought that the next time that I would see him would be in a
coffin at a funeral. He was somewhere thirty minutes away and is now
getting necessary help for his health issues. We found three new
investigators this week: Chris (dad) and Alexia (8 year old) Otero and
Ramon Gonzales. Chris Otero is completely ready to be baptized! He is truly
one of the Lord's elect! The first time we met with the Otero's we did a
little "How to Begin Teaching" from PMG and then asked if he had any
questions. His first question was, "How do I go about being baptized?" That
took me by suprise! I actually chuckled a little bit (oops!) Elder Woodland
was a little bit more composed than I was and answered his question
perfectly. We watched The Restoration DVD and the Spirit was definitely
present! He committed to take Moroni's promise to read, ponder and pray. We
stopped by later on in the week and taught the Word of Wisdom (we saw he
was drinking tea the first lesson) and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After
talking about the W.O.W. he willingly accepted to live it. They have three
young girls, Alexia being the oldest. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ
with an object lesson. We talked about how baptism and the Holy Ghost helps
us get back to heaven. We used a tea-bag to demonstrate this. We opened up
the tea-bag and dumped out all the crushed up junk. We then took the bag
and shaped it into a cylinder. We took a lighter and lit the top of it on
fire. The fire moves down the bag and when it gets to the bottom the warm
air rises and takes the tea-bag with it. They...and I were fascinated with
the lesson :) We plan on meeting with them three times this week and their
baptismal interview will be on Saturday because they are going to get
baptized on Nov. 24th!! I am so stoked because this will be my first
baptism that I had a large part in the entire teaching process. Ramon is on
parole and is living in a half-way house. In prison he would go to meetings
where they would read the Book of Mormon together and discuss it. He seems
really solid and has the desire to come to church. Oh, great news in a
sense! Doug never went to Utah! He went into a drug rehab center here in
Tucson and called us still wanting to be baptized! Sunday was Stake
Conference and it was a broadcast from SLC. Elder Holland and Pres. Eyring
talked. Elder Holland mentioned that he cannot remember the last General
Conference that so much revelation was received and brought before the
entire body of the church. Wow! That was a pretty bold statement! He talked
a lot about the mission lowering age! The mission department called
President Killpack and told him that withing 3-4 months the number of
missionaries is going to go from ~180 all the way to 250! President Eyring
talked about the need to be optimistic through hard times because the
optimist is always better off then the pessimist. Thursday, Elder Bradley
D. Foster of the Seventy is coming to tour the mission and we are having a
half-mission conference. I don't know what that means yet but hey, it will
be good. Missionary work is fun! There is no better joy then seeing the
change that only the Holy Ghost can cause to happen. Thank you for your
love and support!

Tucson--#9

Hey Everyone!

This week has been absolutely crazy! There is a stomach bug thats been
going around and I got in on Thursday. It was no fun at all! I am just
starting to get my energy back but my appetite is lagging behind. Our only
progressing investigator, Doug Dicky was scheduled to have his baptismal
interview last Saturday. It needed to be with President Killpack because of
his past life. He didn't show up on Saturday for the interview so we
rescheduled it for yesterday. Funny thing happened while President
Killpack, Elder Woodland and I were waiting for Doug to show up. There was
a plane in the sky that had just drawn a smiley face in the sky. I thought,
"That is totally awesome!" Then the pilot started spelling out a word. It
started with an 'R' and then an 'O' and eventually spelled out Romney. It
was pretty cool to see and all of Tucson had to have been able to see it
because it was so large. I could not get it all in a single picture because
it happened almost exactly over our heads. Well, back on the home front
now. Sunday rolled around and I saw Doug before Sacrament meeting and he
seemed excited for his interview after church. After church rolls around
and I go up to Doug and ask if he was ready for his interview. President
was all ready for the interview and everything. Doug tells me that he
doesn't want to be baptized anymore and he is moving back to Utah tomorrow
which he is probably already gone by now. This took me by complete
surprise. He would not talk to us about it so there was nothing that we
could do to help him. On a positive note, we had a part-member family come
to church today where the husband and oldest daughter are not a member.
They had not been to church in a LONG time, since before I came out and we
did not even need to remind them. The husband is interested in learning
about the Gospel and we are meeting with the family on Wednesday. We also
met with Patricia Vespoli and gave her a large print copy of the Book of
Mormon. We talked about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Her seed of
faith is already starting to grow. She told us basically what Elder
Holland's General Conference talk was on a couple years ago about the Book
of Mormon and Restoration. She said that Joseph Smith would not have died
for what he believed and knew to be true unless he actually KNEW. He would
not have lied to the thousands and now millions of people. Ever since our
Palmyra trip, I have looked at the Book of Mormon in a completely different
light. So many things needed to fall into place and they did and hundreds
of millions of lives have been changed because of Joseph Smith and
everything that the Restoration includes. I have noticed my testimony of
the Book of Mormon grow rapidly while being out on my mission. Talking with
Patricia, heard a change in my voice as I testified of the Book of Mormon
and I honestly felt like my voice was "like the roar of a lion". Oh if more
people would recognize the great good and eternal blessings that the Book
of Mormon brings to their lives and coupled with the Bible one's testimony
of both books will grow immensely. This morning, Sis. Wilkinson
(less-active family) texted us saying that her husband had been missing
since last night and had left a suicide night. I have come to realize real
fast that the mission is not for the faint of heart or for the little boy.
It matures you real quick if you allow out. I would never have seen myself
a year ago not even a week ago trying to console a wife who for all she
knew her husband is gone. I feel like this should be an exception, please
pray for Sister Wilkinson and her family that they will be comforted.
Love,
Elder Urry
LiveStrong
Alma 34:32