Elder Sighting 05-02-2014

Text from a Sister Winthers: "Hi, this is Karen W!  "It's always fun to have Elder Chandler over. He is our favorite.  So glad that he is close again.  Here is a picture I took last night with my son."

Letter 04-29-2014

We've had a fun week still preparing for the baptisms of Sally and Mark. Had a really great FHE last night with one of the member families in the area and them. S&M are really excited to be a part of the ward even though all the struggles and difficulties they're going through. I hope that soon Marks older siblings will decide it's time for them to work towards being baptized as well, cuz they're just as fun.

Our finding as been down for a while it seems... so we're spending a lot of time working through the wards and such to get those coveted Ward Mission Process referrals. I'm kind of a special case in the mission I think but 75%+ of my baptisms have been WMP sourced, so since working with the ward councils works for me I guess I'll keep doing it.

I'll probably do facetime again for mothers day call so i'll get in touch with the house i'm planning on making the call from so you can figure that out for May 11th.

--Elder Chandler

--------------------------

thought: memorize

not really a thought just an assignment that will benefit everyone exponentially - memorize the bullet points in the 30-45 minute lesson plans in chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel. They are an incredible doctrinal foundation for all members of the church to have. They also serve as very easy clips to slip into conversations you have with everyone. They're so simple and powerful! So memorize as many as you can, starting from Lesson 1: The Restoration and use one this week in a conversation.

Letter 04-22-2014

Short letter this week, not much to report on... we had a zone training this week where I was able to give my training I gave at my last district meeting. Our church attendance in the zone went up from 45% to 85%. :)

We're continuing to teach Sally and Mark. They're really awesome and are still excited to be baptized on the 3rd of May. We're going to temple square with our other two on date, Alisha and Talisha, on Saturday after Mark and Sally have their baptismal interview and we eat lunch with President, ha.

I have 2 months left to have 8 more baptisms... so this last part of my mission means working super hard as always.

--Elder Chandler

Elder Note 04-15-2014

Question from Dad Greg:      "
"Nice you watched conference with the Archelutas. Was David there? When Bill and Gini saw your letter, they were excited and wanted more details."

Response from Ryan:

"Yes David was there, but it's kind of low key. He's come out proselyting with us a couple times over the last couple weeks. Such a great person - probably the most humble person I've ever met. He'll be helping us with a training tonight for the stake mission and he attended my last district meeting just for fun. attached is a district photo; but just like your Shawn Bradley cards this isn't for distribution over the internet... very private photo only for family. Great person and now a great friend."

Letter 04-15-2014

This week was busy and full of great things! First off the weather was in the 60s and 70s all week - at our mission conference they told us we can take off suit coats. Best day of each year :)

Cesar and Sarah were baptized on Saturday! We did their baptism at 7:30 in the morning because of their work schedules being weird, so a lot of blessings are in store for our stake mission leader Elliot Smith for getting up at 4:30am to get the font filled. And since that moment we had a TON of miracles happen.

C&S were our only two people that had a baptismal date left, so I knew we needed to refill our teaching pool so we wouldn't have to go through the mess of spending no time teaching. That meant a lot of time on knees trying to figure out where to be and who to see. The ultimate goal was to achieve standard of excellence - our mission vision for weekly key indicators. I've never achieved it before (and not very many missionaries do - it's very high...). But we ended up finally putting a mom and her son that we had known about for a while but never gotten very far with on date for baptism. More still needed to be found apparently though. A ward mission process referral we had gotten last week but hadn't been home when our appointment was scheduled ended up coming to church with her 10 year old unbaptized daughter!! We pulled them aside and set a baptismal date with both of them as well, making a grand tally of enough people to achieve the standard of excellence. Lunch at Cheesecake Factory on President Moffat!!!! (yes we're bribed to hit it haha)

i picked up a new shirt at walmart today thats bright and spring and stuff too :) why do i like buying new tshirts so much... i dunno. at least they're only $7.50

--Elder Chandler

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thought: missionary work and the Atonement (Easter)

I gave talks in two different wards this week... both wards ended up leaving me 20 minutes, so I had a pretty open gap to speak in. I ended up adding a section about the Atonement to my regular talk. 

The central focus of the tie between missionary work and the Atonement was:

When Jesus Christ performed the Atonement, he did all of the "work" of missionary work.

All of the work of saving, of resurrecting, of "bring[ing] to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" was done in those tender moments in Gethsemane, the suffering on Golgotha, and the glory of the garden tomb. With that perspective, we need not look further than the examples of the only three examples of mortal men asked to directly assist in the infinite atoning sacrifice.

1) Peter, James, and John in the Garden of Gethsemane: from them we learn the importance of staying awake through the Atonement, "staying awake through the Restoration", staying awake through the Hastening of the Work of Salvation. The Lord simply asks us to stay aware of His workings around us in order to supplement the missionary work that Jesus and only Jesus can do for ourselves and others.

2) Simon of Cyrene on the way to Golgotha: How would you like to be the one man that, just for a moment, gets to carry the cross of the Savior? We are asked at times to "bear crosses" that each of us must carry, and as we do we help the Savior do his Atonement and missionary work.

3) Joseph of Arimethea and the garden tomb: Talmage states that if Christ weren't given the garden tomb, he likely would have been cast into a common grave of thieves. So from Joseph we learn that we must give place for miracles to happen. We need to create situations in which we give others the opportunity to be reborn.

Let the Atonement do it's saving work. Let it do it's enabling work. All we do is a subset to what the Atonement enables us to do, but we have duties to assist in Christ's divine mission which will bring joy to both ourselves and all those we share it with.

Elder Sighting 04-14-2014

Text:
 "Your awesome missionary sons had dinner here tonight! They are doing great! Our Ward just loves them! --The Finlinson Family.

Letter 04-08-2014

Lots of things happened this week!

- We had a fun district meeting on Wednesday where we talked about setting expectations to get to church. We created mini lesson plans for doing so.

- We found a family that is super prepared and ready to be baptized! :) :) :)

- Conference of course! We spent time over at the Archuletas for the morning session. David has two younger siblings that both play Pokémon, Fire Emblem, Rune Factory, etc. hahaha we all get along almost too well. I loved Elder Holland's talk from that session

- For the next session we went to the Despains... had some good talks there too

- Watched priesthood session at our investigator's house that's getting baptized on Saturday. Great talk by Elder Oaks.

- Sunday morning was at the Westenskows. WHAT A SESSION. Loved Elder Ballards talk, and really suggest you take his advice to study PMG. Elder Bednar's talk was really nice as well.

- Elder Bass had never been to conference before so we got tickets to sit right on the front row for the Sunday evening session! Always great to get to stand when President Monson comes in. Elder Christofferson's talk is probably my favorite from this year... It's very familiar to me b/c of President Monson's talk I think in May 2010. Very similar structure.

- Overall busy and happy and fun and stuffs.

--Elder Chandler

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thought: conference

I always appreciate when we get to hear the apostles special witnesses of Christ. That's one of the reasons why I loved both Elder Holland's and Christofferson's talks. As you combine their two sure witnesses, you see a powerful concept arise.

1) Christofferson - Christ is a living, resurrected being

2) Holland - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has God's restored priesthood keys

#1 gives all of Christendom merit. It is a truth, and Elder Christofferson does a great job stating just exactly what that means.

#2 gives our church additional merit. Again being truth, it means that sacred ordinances administered under the priesthood authority in the LDS church are recognized as saving.

Anyways it's always nice to be able to "lean on some trees of life" every once in a while if/when going through doubts or trials.

Elder Sighting 04-06-2014

Facebook Message:
"This is how we do conference in our house! Then they're off to the conference center for the afternoon session... "  From Jackie Westenskow in Murray.

Letter 04-01-2014

We had to move into a new apartment and it took all morning so only have like 3 minutes to email.

5503 Avalon Dr

Murray, UT 84107

I'm still in the same area same companion for the next six weeks... ummm we went to the temple on Thursday that was great. Have a ton of thoughts on covenants (sounds like they're on a similar line to your ideas elder house).

Hope a couple pictures make up for few words. Aaron's baptism and district meeting.

--Elder Chandler

Letter 03-25-2014

It's great to be in Murray!!! I love how connected all of the people are. Sometimes I feel like I've graduated from Murray High each of the last two years I know so many of the senior class. Definitely one of the random good things about being in Salt Lake City in our homey areas. I went on exchanges again in Murray Little Cottonwood and the Winthers gave me a Murray baseball shirt haha

Aaron Marietta was a miracle... we had just finished doing some tracting in the early afternoon, but hadn't had any success catching anyone at home. We sat down to make some calls to fellowshippers to set up daily contact with our investigators. As has become a habit lately, I said a silent prayer to ask God to know His will for me right then. I immediately thought of Aaron, which was weird because I had never met him before... he was a former that had been taught by Elders Bass and Lynn. We texted his fellowshipper and asked if he had made any contact with him recently. Within a second after we sent the text, we got a call from an unknown number, and it was Aaron calling from a payphone! He had been homeless for three weeks - his roommate kicked him out because he found out he was getting baptized. Our number was the only one he had memorized so as soon as he got enough change he called, so we set up an appointment with him and got the ward heavily involved. He's going to be baptized this Saturday and is very excited to make those covenants.

 thank you, Elder Chandler ---------------------------

thought: a turned phrase
The expectation of missionary work is for you to invite others to take the missionary discussions.
The challenge of missionary work is for others to ask you to take the missionary discussions!

Elder Sighting 03-18-2014

Text Message from a Sister Bingham from Ryan's last area in Bennion.

"We ran into your son today when we had the other Elders out shopping...he said everything is good...he looked so good....it's fun to see these Elders even after they have been transferred."

Letter 03-18-2014

It was super windy yesterday. So windy actually that Elder Bass' pedal fell off from pedaling so hard against it, so we went to a member's house to get a wrench to fix it. They weren't home so we went to our neighboring stake mission leader's home. We apologized about interrupting their family night, only to end up turning the corner in their home into the general relief society president, Sister Burton. So we met her and got our pedal fixed. Anyways if you hear her tell a story in conference about a missionary who was peddling so hard his pedal fell off it's about Elder Bass and I. :)

Sunday evening there was a youth fireside about dating... we went by at the end to get refreshments. It turned out to be a tri-stake meeting with the Little Cottonwood, Parkway, and South stakes. I knew EVERYONE hahahaha it was awesome. We're going to get a bi-stake youth activity going on with Mobsters and Missionaries to get more non-members to. It should be awesome.

We're still teaching a ton. And working with a ton of people. It's kind of a sad vicious cycle though because we put a lot of people on baptism date, then their baptism dates get close and they fall off, but we find more in between. At least our teaching pool is huge so we'll have a great couple months coming up.

Elder Chandler

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thought: repentance and covenant making

I've been pondering repentance a lot lately, especially the relationship and transfer of debt between Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and ourselves.

Sometimes I think I'm tricked when thinking about repentance into thinking repentance is us transferring the weight of our sins onto Christ. That it's a one-way transfer of burden, because Christ suffered for us anyways. As I've been thinking about it before I think I understand better that repentance itself is a covenant, a two-way promise. Christ takes the burdens of our sins off of us, and we take upon ourselves a burden.

It's interesting to me that, especially in the D&C, it seems the burden that Christ puts on us as our term is actually to go out and do missionary work. I know I've felt the power of the Atonement more as I've gone out and borne testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. I've never felt better about myself, my world, and God!

Elder Sighting 03-21-2014

Jackie Westenskow

about an hour ago via iOS · Edited 

Always love the awesome spirit these young men bring into our home. Thanks Rose and Valerie for sharing your awesome boys with us!

Elder Sighting 03-21-2014

Jackie Westenskow‎Diane Knighton Jones

4 hrs · 

Diane - do you have a friend with the last name 'Chandler' from Bentonville, AR with a son on a mission in Murray? I'm really not a stalker, but would LOVE to chat with her...her son is coming for dinner tonight - could you 'introduce' me? I saw that you are also her 'friend' on fb (and in case you forgot who I am...maiden name Haines) 

Like · 

• 

  Diane Knighton Jones I remember you! Yes, Valerie Lewis Chandler is one of my most favorite people! She and her husband, Greg, were in our ward when we were just starting our families. We served together in callings and had a great friendship as women and as couples. She had boys and I had girls. I'm sure her son is top notch as a missionary. When they completed school they moved far away and we've only had limited contact since. But we still get Chrstimas cards every year and keep up a little. She has a blog athttp://www.valerie-chandler.blogspot.com/ where you can see the amazing woman she is and the awesome family they are. I'm sure if you messaged her she would be more than delighted to talk to you about her son. (Is this what you mean by 'introduce"?) If you need me to do anything else, let me know!

  39 mins · Like
• 

  Jackie Westenskow Fantastic...the fact that you tagged me serves as an 'introduction' - I wanted to be sure she's the right misisonary mom. He seems like a great kid - looking forward to dinner with him tonight 

  30 mins · Like
• 

  Valerie Lewis Chandler Well, isn't this the sweetest little FB chain ever???? Nice to see your cute face, Diane, and Jackie-- a new best friend. How nice to meet you!  Do you want to "talk" her on this thread, or do you want to TALK? 479 696 9251 if so. I"ve got a smile on. Thanks Girls.

Letter 03-11-2014

Sometimes a doodle during lunch is the most telling of how I'm feeling during the week... so here's one :)

From what I've heard the Arkansas weather is pretty bipolar lately... the Utah weather has been too. We had 70 degree weather a couple days ago, and we're getting scattered snowstorms today. At least it keeps things interesting, although I am ready for the day when we can tuck our suit coats away for good and wear short sleeves again.

Things are SO BUSY lately. There's seriously nothing better than having teaching appointments scheduled from 4 til 9. We've got so many people that we get to meet each day, and any moment we have that we're not teaching we're meeting the members and getting to know them.

We were sitting in church Sunday with a couple investigators, and a member taps me on the shoulder and tells us there's a couple people outside waiting for us. Turns out there's a few people from Iraq looking for jobs and the gospel. We're going to start teaching them soon, so we'll see if we can bring some Muslims into the church. I'm amazed at the diversity of people I've taught on my mission... every single culture and nationality it seems is here in Utah.

Things are going well--

Elder Chandler

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thought: leadership and management

For those of you who didn't know, my current companion Elder (Max) Bass actually was sent on his mission from the Grove Ward in the stake. So he remembers a lot of the same stake meetings and stuff, ha. Anyways, we were talking last night before bed about how sometimes it seems like in our mission we're very short on leaders and very high on managers.

I feel very strongly that my calling as a district leader is not to just manage what my district's doing, how much time they spend doing what, etc, but to "lift, inspire, encourage, motivate, and bless". I find a lot more fulfillment and see a lot more success by focusing on leadership first, management second. In some ways being a leader rather than a manager is a lot harder to do. It requires more prioritization, more listening, more people.

I guess you can't work with people like they're things. With things, fast is fast and slow is slow. With people, slow is fast and fast is slow. The most important thing I can do as a leader is help others find their "voice" in this mission, and then to help them use that voice to fulfill the Lord's work.

Sorry kind of random things and not much explanation but to me they ring true.

Elder Sighting 03-09-2014

From Greg's MBA Board friend--
"Nathan is a friend and fellow Marriott Schooler."

From: Nathan Anderson [mailto:andersonjn@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2014 07:09 PM
To: Greg Chandler
Subject: Pic of Elder Bass & Elder Chandler

As promised! Photobomb by yours truly. 

-Nathan 

Itinerary Arrives--

CHURCH TRAVEL CWT                          DATE 06MARCH14

50 EAST NORTH TEMPLE ST                    AGENT VH/MA BOOKING REF 2CS6DO

SALT LAKE CITY UT 84150

TELEPHONE: 801 240-5111                    CHANDLER/RYAN GREGO 298351-R

FAX      : 801-240-5115

 

  MISSIONARY TRAVEL

  UTAH SALT LAKE CITY CENTRAL MISSION

 

SERVICE               DATE  FROM           TO             DEPART  ARRIVE

_____________________ _____ ______________ ______________ _______ ______

DELTA AIR LINES       25JUN SALT LAKE C UT ATLANTA GA     830A    219P

DL 1524           WEDNESDAY SALT LAKE CITY HARTSFIELD JAC

S ECONOMY                   TERMINAL 2     TERMINAL S

                            FOOD FOR PURCHASE             NON STOP

                            RESERVATION CONFIRMED         3:49 DURATION

                  AIRCRAFT: BOEING 767-300/300ER

                            NO SMOKING SEAT REQUESTED

 

DELTA AIR LINES       25JUN ATLANTA GA     FAYETTEVILL AR 300P    351P

DL 5265           WEDNESDAY HARTSFIELD JAC NW ARKANSAS    

S ECONOMY                   TERMINAL S

           NON SMOKING                                    NON STOP

                            RESERVATION CONFIRMED         1:51 DURATION

                            FLIGHT OPERATED BY EXPRESSJET DBA DELTA C

            AIRCRAFT OWNER: EV  EXPRESS JET

                  AIRCRAFT: CANADAIR REGIONAL JET

                            NO SMOKING SEAT REQUESTED

 

RESERVATION NUMBER(S)  DL/H3TTCL

 

CHANDLER/RYAN GREGORY

"Return Plans for Your Missionary"

I have done tentative return travel for your missionary and wanted to advise you in case you are planning to come and pick them up on their release date.  As soon as church travel gets me the itinerarie’s, I will send  to you upon my receipt.  Their release date is June 25^th and it is that day that they will travel home.  It is a bitter sweet experience for us as their adult advisors, as they bless our lives by serving the Lord.  You can be very proud.  If you have any questions, please contact me.

I will keep in touch. 

Kind regards.

Sister Wishart

Assistant Executive Secretary

Utah Salt LakeCity Central Mission

Letter 03-04-2014

It's weird to think that in Arkansas it's snowy and icy and cold because it's been such a mild, nice, 50-degree February this month in Utah. We're getting a lot of rain so we'll have something to drink out here during the summer. That's good. If the rain would go away it'd be nice frisbee weather

I went on exchanges this week with Elder Miller last week in the Little Cottonwood stake. It was fun to go back and see the people that I used to work with. Elder Hodge and Miller are working with a lot of the people that I was trying to get in with a year ago. One of the most fun things was randomly running into an inactive we were working with who was returning to church and is going to the temple to get her endowments out this month!

Also went on exchanges with Elder Wilson... felt prompted to knock a door we thought would be members, but saw cigarettes in the pot outside. They invited us right in and said they're good friends with our ward mission leader and were coming to church Sunday. They actually came... and we found out to everyone's surprise that he's not a member. There are so many dry mormons out here. We'll be teaching them the stop smoking program on Thursday and set a baptism date with him. We reported seven with a baptism date last week. It's so busy right now!

So things are going well!

Elder Chandler

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thought: unignorable

In Elders quorum last week in one of our wards (Shawn Bradley is in the ward and in this elders quorum) (Sister Burton the general relief society president is also in our area) one of the elders made a cool comment about our church being unignorable. What a cool thought to me!

Although I don't exactly have a lot of access to the news, there's one thing about the gay rights activity going on that has always fascinated me. The gay population has always been there, and it's always sat at about the same percent of the population. Why didn't this issue surface years ago? And yet here it is, now, and everyone at this point is forced to take one side or the other in an emotionally-charged, divisive, overdue subject matter that's plastered all over the media in ugly colors. 

To me, the church is going to have to go through the same "refiners fire". Whether the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be is going to be the center of speculation, of media attention, of emotion. Here over 200 years since its publication though, we're running on just as much about scientific evidence as we've gathered about the hormones that cause homosexuality - we're trying to put together a 1000 piece puzzle with 2 or 3 pieces in both cases. People will place and spin those couple pieces over and over, but in the end the evidence can never be conclusive. Just as in homosexuality, the church debate will be centered on, not the issue itself, but the conflicting and man-made puzzle pieces created to fill in the gaps.

And everyone will be polarized to one side of the issue. And everyone must decide to find out for themselves whether the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be, by the only source they can truly find out - by asking God Himself. And it is true!--

Elder Sighting 3-02-2014

Hello Greg! Hope you are well.

I had a missionary from Bentonville with me last week while we dropped off an investigator after the YM basketball game.

Didn't dawn on me till today that Elder Chandler has to be your son. He mentioned in his testimony that his dad is in Marketing at Wal-Mart and then I knew.

I tried to gab him and snap a quick picture to send you, but he and his companion took off for another ward. Next time!

I'll make the connection when I see him again and we will try to get them over for a dinner - it's tough competition in these parts.

Take care,
-Nathan