August 18, 2014

Hey Mommy!

First I will start and answer all of your questions! My companion’s name is Jacob S. He wants to go to BYU when he gets back. Yeah, he hit his year mark, and it would be really fun to live with him, except me and Austin want to go to UVU for 2 years, and then to BYU. We will see what happens. We will definitely hang out after though! It was really fun to see Elder C. I see him kind of often. Every time that we have a meeting with president he is there! It’s pretty cool. But no, nobody else is really there. Everyone else is in a different area, so I don’t get to see them. But eventually I will :) and yes, I did get a little birthday cake. It was very good! We all shared it at the lunch we ate! Every meeting we have with president is with every missionary in the city of Chihuahua. That’s what you saw in the picture, all the missionaries in Chihuahua. Elder S is at the very top in the middle!

Well, I have started doing the mission choir for the last few weeks. It’s SO FUN. We sound AMAZING. Hermana Chavez took a video and maybe put it on Facebook. I don’t know. But it’s super awesome! The baptisms go so far, we haven’t baptized anyone this month. But we have everybody to do it. We just need to get them ready! That should be pretty fun, but very hard at the same time. We have to find the need of every person, to be able to teach them well. That is also hard, otherwise they won’t open up their hearts to listen. The Book of Mormon is EVERYTHING in this work. Tell everyone! If the investigators get a testimony of the book, it’s a sure baptism. You just need to show them how the book can answer every question they have, and how to do it.

That’s pretty exciting for Ty. He will be a great missionary. And I feel for T. I understand how that would be. D seems like he is doing okay. He has been writing me pretty much every week so that’s nice. I am gonna bring him back to the church no matter what I do. It’s not okay that he has gotten farther away from the church. As for his work, whatever makes him happy I guess! That’s all the matters right? I think I would like to work at his last place of employment. They don’t do anything ever, like 3 hours a day. That’s fine with me!! HA!!

The boiler blew up on my hand! Ouch!

Well, I hope that everything is okay. I love you and miss you. Mom.. I AM GOING TO HAVE MY FIRST MISSION BABY!! (Because I have 9 months in the field.) That was pretty fast. I love you and know that all will be okay, because the Lord always provides for his children. Take Care!! Oh, and have fun in school with your new kids!! Well, I gotta go mommy! I love you tons and tons. I hope that you know that I am doing great, and the Lord is strengthening me more than I could have ever imagined. I have a firm immovable testimony, and I know that it will serve me for the rest of my life. I am grateful for how amazing you have raised me. I could NOT have asked for a better mother. The way you raised me, is exactly how I want to raise my kids. I never said this enough, but I love you TONS, and I am thankful for the example you set for me as an amazing mother and a faithful child of the Lord. Thank you SO MUCH for starting my mission papers for me:) LOVE YOU MOMMY!!!

   Elder Shaddick :)

August 11, 2014

Hey Mommy!

Thanks for the email!! Things have been really good down here for me! Yeah I think it’s pretty cool how my companion lives so close to us. And are you kidding? I LOVE Elder S. He’s the best companion! We will definitely hang out when we get home. He is hilarious, easy to get along with, and we work hard! About our goal for baptisms, we set that! We set what we think we can get. Or what the Lord can get. I have learned here, that everything we have is absolutely from the Lord. All our success, trials, and everything. It’s amazing. We are doing alright, we have all the people to be baptized, now we just need to throw them into the water! Haha! Jk. We can do this with the Lords help.

It was pouring so we had to wait under a tree!

Nothing really interesting has happened this week, which is kind of sad, but things are cruising along. We are trying really hard to find more people to teach, so that’s going pretty good too. I am really happy that you had so much company with you! That must make you all pretty happy. Besides all of the dogs! Woah! That’s a lot. But I know it was still a good time. Well, I have to go! I just want to say that I love you and that you will all be in my thoughts and prayers! Take care and remember how much I love you and how much the Lord loves you!! Be safe!!

   Love, your favorite Elder,

Elder Shaddick :)

My companion said, "Woah! Don't move! Your eyes are different colors!"

August 4, 2014

Hey Mommy!

Yeah! There are a few great and weird stories to tell you this week. I will start with the biggest one. So we were just walking along, and out of nowhere, this dog just runs up and bites me in the back of the leg! And then ran off! 

Dogs are everywhere around here!

For the rest of that night, and the whole next day, things just started to get super weird. We didn’t feel the Spirit at ALL. It was a rough day. I fell into a hole, a car drove by and splashed all over me, a guy locked us in the house and tried to call the cops for trespassing, and just a lot of horrible things like that happened. Then at night, we were just thinking why this all could be happening. We prayed a lot, and it just didn’t help. I came to the conclusion, that there might be some sort of bad spirit following us. We decided to finish the night with a blessing to me with oil. A way to get rid of bad spirits is with consecrated oil. So we tried that. Elder S said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to be clean.” I SAW THE DEMON! I SAW IT MOM! It was standing in my room by the bed. Then when he said that, It swooped right in front of my face, and screamed and me, and disappeared. That was FREAKY. But SO COOL! We cast out a demon that was following me. It was crazy!

There’s that story, I guess nothing really big else has happened, but this month, we are going to have 11 baptisms. Our president put up the goals of every missionary this month in a meeting we had. Everyone had like 4, 5, or 6 and we had 11. He asked us, “Is that a worthy goal, or is it just a dream?” We told him it was a worthy goal because we know the Lord is going to help us, and he said great, it’s going to happen by your faith. I know it will. We literally already have all of the people to do it :) The Lord is amazing. How have you all been this week? Oh, I will try to do what I can to send the pictures. I am really glad that all the people liked the videos! You should put it on mine too! I have another one for you!

Well, I dont have much more time so I will send this now!  I love you mommy!  Take care and have a good week! :)

Elder Shaddick

July 28, 2014

Hey mommy!

         This week was also really, really good. Things have been going super well and I love it. Sadly, our zone only finished off the month with 38 baptisms. But the record for President Chavez is 25, so we crushed that!! But we are going to get 50 this month I know it!! And yeah, I was probably at Austin’s because I had never seen it before. I cried too, that’s for sure.

And yeah, about Marisol.. We baptized her too :) It was really good. She moved out but she still visits the house frequently. Which I think is good. I had a dream mom. Like literally! I saw Marisol and her husband. They got married and sealed in the temple. I saw it, and I was there. I hugged Marisol, and that’s all that I remember. It was the coolest thing ever because even with the problems they have, I felt like it’s going to happen, because I saw it. We went to their house yesterday and showed them the Joseph Smith movie, and they all watched it. Even the dad! He liked it, but he started saying stuff about what he thought was wrong about the church and why. He thought that we had pressured Marisol to get baptized and told her to leave him. That was not the case at all. She chose to, we just found a spot for her to stay. But we cleared that all up with him, and we literally saw a change in him. A physical change. I told them both about the dream I had. At first they were hesitant, but we have a LOT to do to help. David wants to do it. But Marisol doesn’t believe that her love can come back, but the Lord works miracles :)

Cooling off with some yummy ice cream!

The lady that gave us chocolate was not a member, she was just a worker at the gas station. It really made our day so much better! And I will see what I can do about sending you the videos every week ya? :) Ya that picture was the best. Especially with me in front! That’s the Bautizona. Baptizing zone! It’s a pun. Anyways, yeah the Mormon Battalion is beast! We kick butt and we will keep kicking butt. We are going to split this stake!

Wherever you want to move is good with me! Herriman would be great though! Well, I guess I will send this now. I hope that you all have a good week!  I love you tons and tons mommy!!!!

   

Elder Shaddick

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

P.S. I have no plans for my B day! Just going to work all day! It will be like a normal day! I am pretty excited :P

They made me a cake to celebrate my b-day!

July 21, 2014

Hey mommy!

Thanks for the letter; it was a great one! I love hearing about what goes on in the real world! I say the real world because missionaries are not real people in the real world. :P Anyway, things here have been really good, and REALLY crazy. We have seen SO many miracles here its crazy. I would love to tell you all of them so lets see how the things go here.

Okay, so last Monday, we watched 17 miracles as a zone. That was just the start of the week of pure miracles. It was a really good movie and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. Okay, so, the family we are teaching is the family Nevarrez Catache. They are really, really AMAZING. They are the second miracle. So about them... The wife´s name is Marisol. She and her husband have a lot of problems, like they want to separate. The good part about that is they are not actually married. But they have been together for 10 years. They have 3 kids named, Alexia, Valeria, and Cristofer. They are an amazing family. 

I love this amazing family!

So, the problem here, is the mom and kids want to be baptized this week. But, they can’t get baptized if she is living together with her husband without being married. And she doesn’t want to be with him anymore, so basically we spent the entire week on a member hunt. We looked down the list of every member we had, to try to find her a place to live because she doesn’t have any money or a job, because her husband wouldn’t let her work because ´Women need to stay at home and take care of the kids’. We went through literally 30 or so members and all of them said no. BUT, the very LAST member that we passed for, we shared them an amazing scripture and visit about serving people to serve God. And she said YES!!

She and her kids are going to move in today and are going to be a lot happier. And by the way.. This last Saturday... We baptized both of her kids :) :) They are so adorable. Alexia has 10 years, Valeria’s 8, and Cristofer 6. So we couldn’t baptize him. But, we are going to baptize Marisol this next Saturday, when they are all moved in and happy!! That was the biggest miracle of that day. Then after, we were EXHAUSTED and had no energy. But some nice, nice lady at the gas station gave us chocolate, and said it looked like we needed something to enjoy! That was another little miracle. Ha! The chocolate here isn’t as good as it is in the U.S., but it’s still chocolate and we were so grateful. But the gas station was 30 minutes from our house, and we had to walk back. And the last miracle was, a member came by and said, “You look tired! Want a ride?” and gave us a ride! It was so nice!!

This week has been really good and really crazy. I haven’t had time to think, but it has been so good. This zone was definitely inspired. We have by far the most baptisms in the mission this month, and we are going to go take a picture for that. 

The Mormon Battalion!!

We have 21 baptisms this month, with a sure 11 more with a possibility of 30 more. We could, just our zone, the Battalion, baptize 50 in one month!! That would be so cool! Well, I have written a lot, it’s time to end it. I want to tell you that I love you so much and I am really grateful for all the love and support I have from you all. I wish you all the best and hope that you have a great week! Remember to always pray, because the Lord can work miracles. I have seen it. LOVE YOU!!!! This is going by fast, and I just completed 8 months yesterday! Crazy. Well I love you tons! Take care mommy!!!

Elder Shaddick :)  (A.K.A.  Elder Guapo)

P.S.  We sang at the baptism.  I will see if I can send you the video!  Love you :)

P.P.S. I have heard from some people that I look like this person in a movie called ‘Fault in the Stars’ or whatever it’s called. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I heard that I look and act like him.  From like 3 girls! :P Hahaha! Well it’s whatever. They all said they thought about me the whole movie, because that’s how I treat girls too! I take that as a compliment!