Letter 02-25-2014

Murray is awesome as always! It's fun to walk in and know pretty much all the adults parents, all the kids friends, and all the grandparents kids haha. They pretty much all lived in the Little Cottonwood or Parkway stakes... or Bennion East sometimes too.

We're working with a ton of people right now. A lot of them were kind of being sat on but we're moving forward with them. That includes a family of 4, a couple that's related to that family, and a bunch of kids. It's awesome! The wards are so supportive.

District meeting was fun on Thursday. We put together a District Mission Statement.

 "By qualifying ourselves for the work, we and our investigators will be united in achieving salvation, enabling us to baptize twice (and more!) monthly."

It's really cool stuffs and all.

Elder Chandler

Elder Sighting 02-23-2014

This post by my friend, Jami Edman, showed up on my Facebook home page tonight.  So sweet.

Jami Evans Edman

We had the Sister Missionaries eat with us for Edman family dinner‪#‎sosweet‬ ‪#‎1hasonlyBeenout4days‬ @valerieChandler they know Ryan-they say he is an awesome missionary ‪#‎ofCourse‬

Elder Sighting 02-18-2014

I got this text and picture from Bennion this week, "Hello, Sister Chandler.  My name is Cara H and we just had Elder Chandler for dinner.  Thank you so much for sacrificing your time with him and sending him to us.  He is a very good missionary."

Letter 02-18-2014

I love the Bennion Utah East Stake! The people here are so awesome... We've played dodgeball every Saturday evening the last 2 months and we've started to get SO many people coming. Lots of inactives and some non-members. Our investigators love to come too, ha.

This week is actually transfer week, and I'm moving (wow) back to Murray. I'll be serving as a District Leader still over in the Murray South stake. It's kind of a funny story because way back a year ago when I was in Little Cottonwood I had to call the Murray South stake mission leader to coordinate some things, and he prophetically stated that he "would look forward to working with me in the future". Interesting, haha. Murray Little Cottonwood is actually in my district, so that means I can go and eat at all my old haunts (including the Despains, ha.) I'm sad to leave this stake though. But it won't be too long til I'll be back.

Jennieca was going to be baptized on Saturday, but she didn't come to church this Sunday. We had her all ready but she decided at the last second as we were biking over to go to her old Pentecostal church one time just to double check and make sure she was making the right decision. She said she didn't feel the Spirit, and that there's definitely something special in our church. While she may have made the right decision for her testimony, it does mean she has to wait another week to be baptized, so on March 1st she'll go through with it.

We had stake conference with an Elder Steven Allen on Saturday and Sunday. Usually missionaries aren't invited to Saturday sessions of stake conference but we all had a special invite. It was really cool. We got to be on a panel with some youth, some couples, and the conference was just us each answering the one question: what do you think about when you're going to sleep at night? I said baptizing and helping my district to baptize. :)

In any case I'm excited to head over to Murray again. The people there are awesome. (I hear Shaun Bradley lives in my new area.) It's hard though to say bye to an area you know so well to (likely) go to the last area I'll serve in!

Elder Chandler

Letter 02-11-2014

The weather has been sitting in the high forties this week and should continue to do so. Everyone says it's just a really late January thaw and it'll get cold again but I'm kinda hoping it will stay nice. It might mean frisbee for zone activities or zone workouts??

I'm enjoying staying in one area for longer than 4 months! Getting to know so many of the members of the wards well is a lot of fun. It's cool to get to see how by creating a foundation of member missionary work we're starting to see so many things come around! Especially people that members have been working with for a while. We kind of cycled out of handing out "What should I do?" sheet and are handing out 21 day promises again. Miracles are happening all the time.

Danny's baptism was a great experience... he has so many people he's known for so long that are his age. All it took was a little prodding from his girlfriend to come around, haha. We went to temple square with he and Tiffanie which was super fun as always.

We're still really busy over here - continuing to work with Jenneica and her husband to stop smoking, and finding people for March. ECBTM (Every Companionship Baptize Twice Monthly!)

--Elder Chandler

Letter 02-04-2014

We woke up to about 4 inches of snow this morning - the ground needs it. This pday we went to go get new phones. Our phones have been getting double texts and dropping calls and stuff. The ZLs told us we'd be getting iPhones but they were joking. We actually waited a couple hours to get our phones downgraded, ha. But at least we don't get double texts I guess? yay...

All of our investigators came to church on Sunday! Jenneica is doing awesome... we went to temple square with them. Other than a little mixup at Trax, everything worked out awesome! They felt the Spirit so strong... I love taking investigators to the God's Plan for Us video thing. They move between six rooms and learn all about the importance of family and how they can be together forever. It's awesome! Danny's baptism is scheduled for Saturday so pictures are forthcoming... We've also got some others coming up towards setting a baptism date.

Elder Chandler