E-mail received 9/8/2010

Man sounds like you guys have been having an eventful week!

 

When I read that Chelsea was engaged I was blown away! But then I read that she was just kidding and I calmed down. Wow I guess I wasn't as ready for that one as I had expected. That would be super soon though.

 

Katelyn would look funny with green feet and things growing out of it and then I come home and my sister is a double amputee who walks around on two wooden legs like Shaemus. I remember Merl now. It's just been a super long time. I hit ten months a couple days ago apparently. It still feels like I just got here!

 

I can't wait to see that video and all the pictures! It's kind of weird but I really haven't thought about home much this transfer. We've been doing a lot of great work and I've been working really hard at making sure that Elder Elliott is trained really well so I've been too busy to think about it.

 

As far as pants go I wear about a 32" waist would probably be best. I just bought three pairs of pants from goodwill (3 pairs for $11 yeah!) and then somethings else for like $10, I can't remember what or from where right now, must have been important. All my pants that I have are black so if you still decide to buy me one I would like maybe a dark brown pair would be really nice.

 

I've decided to hold on to the clothes because it's going to cost so much to send them and now that they're all nice and packed up in boxes their not as much of a hassle.

 

We had another wonderful week in Emerson. We committed a great family to baptism and to getting married! Being a missionary and a wedding planner is hard work but we're pulling it off somehow! They're an amazing family who all are ready and willing to serve the Lord no matter what it takes. They're getting married this Saturday and then their getting baptized the week after that. It's all going really fast for them but their really great. Their actually going to Seattle next Monday for like a honeymoon I guess so that'll be really cool as well.

 

Our one baptismal date for this upcoming Sunday was super solid and ready to get baptized but his dad convinced him to hold off on it. He's still going to get baptized though and we're setting another date with him.

 

We have an amazing 5 people who are committed to being baptized on a specific date right now and even more people who we're looking forward to setting. The fields of Emerson are white! And we're harvesting.

 

We actually found an amazing woman from the Philippines who lives right across the street from the chapel, yesterday, and she's so excited to read from the Book of Mormon. She's had a lot of contact from the church and just seeing their bright examples of love and humility really opened up her doors to us. She let us right in and really shared how God has really pointed her in this direction and we're planning on extending the invitation to be baptized the next time that we see her. It really goes to show how great an effect we can have on the salvation of others just based off the things that we do. I've really been striving hard to become a more celestial person. Even when it comes to the little things like crude words. Elder Elliott and I have pretty much limited our vocabulary to things that are good (which is an area we can get creative in) and things that are "not good" (which we use for basically everything that doesn't fit in the first category. This way we're not using the same mouth that the Spirit speaks through to put down anyone or to use "terrestrial language." While it may not be immediately horrible words that we use they may not be good words either. I've really felt the Spirit come in when I refrain from those words and use my tongue for the uplifting and edifying of others at all times. Really becoming a bright servant of the Lord through words.

 

We're really excited for the things happening this week and if things work out as planned we should be having baptisms every week for the next month! I love the work!

 

-Elder Guinto

E-mail received 8/30/2010

Wow sounds pretty eventful to me. Yes I did get the garments. They actually sent them separately and I got the tops just a few days ago but they got here safe and sound.

 

Well it's a funny story about the hand thing. So, Elder Coffin is one of those elders who's always full of ideas. Some of them brilliant, and others extremely stupid. He can also be very convincing in getting others to go along with his ideas. I still have warts on my hands and they've actually spread a little despite my efforts to be rid of them and so he proposed that we burn them out. He said he'd done it with another elder and that it had worked. Unfortunately we weren't blessed with the proper tools at that time and so we resorted to an electric stove and the backside of a spoon. What made it really bad is because he decided after the first couple singes that it was going to slow so he'd use the big end of the spoon to hopefully cover more area faster and that resulted in searing the whole knuckle. So that didn't end up very well. But it's all better now with the exception of the scar. I think I will just be patient and get it removed when I get home. I have resolved that burning it doesn't work and neither does freezing it or cutting it off or putting that weird solution on it. I'm sure the doctors will have a more effective method.

 

That's crazy that Jason is back from his mission already! It's crazy to think that this week I'll be hitting my ten months. It really does just breeze by. Pretty soon I'll be at eighteen months and on my way to the final stretch.

 

I hope you send me some of Kt's pictures. That would be cool. It's crazy to think that she's a senior in high school already! They grow up so fast!

 

Funny that you guys had lumpia this week because I had lumpia at a members house this week as well! They didn't have the yummy sweet chili sauce though. That I really missed. Thankfully this is the last week of the tight budget and then we should be alright. I'm surprised that I was able to make it all work out but really goes to show what you can do with careful planning.

 

It's still crazy that Shon's already getting married and even crazier that Candace had a baby! It'll be weird with two new people in the family and while I'll always be loyal and have that loving memory of Aunt Kelly, there's always love to go around. Make sure Dad remembers that no matter who she is, she is a daughter of God who deserves to be happy too and he can either be part of making her feel welcome and loved or be part of making her feel lonely and unaccepted by people she doesn't even know yet. I ran across a cool scripture in chapter 3 of Malachi this morning that says that the Lord, in the last days, will separate the righteous from the evil, those who follow God and those who serve the Devil. It really is that black and white almost when we think about the decisions before us. We can be a force for good and a force for evil. And all things are given to us which are expedient to man to make that choice. Choose wisely.

 

We had a pretty good week this week. Not as amazing as last week but still quite good. We've been able to maintain good work with the members which has really resulted in great progress in our investigators with baptismal dates. We set another one with the brother of one of the members. We saw him on the street and taught him an introduction to the Book of Mormon and the spirit was strong enough that he agreed to be baptized at the end of September right then and there! It was really cool.

 

I also got to go teach in the Spanish area again. I'm really looking forward to a time when I don't have to convene as many companion exchanges. While it's really great to have the opportunity to teach and learn from many different elders throughout a transfer, it makes me leave my area on a consistent basis, which I really don't like to do. I definitely get a lot of variety but lack the consistent focus that I can put to my area. It's hard but I still enjoy it.

 

Our area's really starting to pick up as Elder Elliott and I have been getting more and more consistent. It's really getting to be a great time to work in Emerson. Unfortunately I don't have too much to update you on because most of the things that went on in our area I wasn't there for but we're continuing to experience a lot of success in bringing a lot of people closer to Christ.

 

-Elder Guinto

Latest Pictures Now Ready for viewing

Kyle sent us his latest pictures.  You can view them at Mission Pictures Summer 2010

E-mail received 8/23/2010

Dear Mother,

 

Woa, never heard of a ganglian cyst. But it doesn't sound like too much fun. Tell Maleah that high school is nothing to worry about. She's pretty, fun, sociable and smart. She'll fit right in with the right people and it'll be great.

 

It's good that Katelyn is not overdoing it her senior year, although I don't know if it's wise not to take ANY math. But it's her choice and she'll do fine no matter what she does. Also I have no idea who Merl is. Sorry.

 

That's crazy that all these people are getting married! I'm missing all the action! But there's really a lot of action that we're seeing out here. Tell Becky and Chelsea that I said hi back. That'll be really cool to get a letter from President Turner. I've always looked up to him a lot. Also tell David I said hi! I was thinking the other day about him and how he probably only speaks tagalog now. It was funny because we had a new missionary training this week and all the Portuguese missionaries were there so I sat with them at the lunch that we had. All of us were speaking in Portuguese and then I turned to my companion and said something and he totally didn't understand me and I realized that he couldn't understand anything that we were saying.

 

I'm glad the baptism went well. It's such an amazing experience to attend when there's a convert baptism. The spirit is so strong and you can just see and feel the change that is taking place in the life of another person. It's truly something to live for.

 

Well we had a real blessed week this week. Elder Elliott and I really worked hard and smart. We were running around constantly and we really had no time to breathe between all the service that we did and all the appointments that we had but we really were blessed with a great week. We set two more baptismal dates with people so we have three people that have committed to preparing themselves to be baptized on a scheduled day. One of them we found this week.

 

It was an interesting story actually. Elder Coffin and I ran out of miles last month so we were walking down the street and a guy stopped to talk to us because he'd met with the Elders before. Turns out that his daughter and his ex-wife are members of the church and he was actually almost baptized when he lived in New York. We didn't talk long because he had a place to go but we were able to give him the church address and when sacrament meeting started. Two weeks later, he's in church! I wasn't in church that day because my responsibilities took me to another ward but when he came to church yesterday we met with him afterwards and set him with a baptismal date! He's really one of the most humbled, spiritual, prepared to receive the Gospel individuals that I've met on my mission so far. He's getting baptized September 19 so we're excited to teach him the rest.

 

We also found a new family this week, which was quite a miracle. We received a text with a referral to the family from a member who lives in Toronto, Canada. We went and visited the referral right away but their daughter Maria was the only one home so she told us to come back in an hour or so. We went and did a little finding and getting in contact with some potentials, hoping that there might be an opportunity to make it back there some time that night because we actually had an appointment with someone else at the time we were told to return. The appointment cancelled and when we came back to meet with them I found out it was actually someone that I'd met about five weeks ago! We didn't teach her because I thought she only spoke Spanish because when she greeted us at the door and I realized she spoke Spanish I just started into speaking Spanish and that was the sum of it. We were going to give her as a referral to the Spanish Elders in West New York because they cover our area in Spanish (Kindof) but she said that she needed like a month for things to settle down. On top of that after we start talking with them, in walk the Mitchells, the senior missionaries who work in our ward who had been trying to get us there but we couldn't because of the appointment. Anyway we had a great lesson and they came to church this week! We're planning on setting them with a baptismal date on Tuesday.

 

It's a really exciting time for working in Emerson! Elder Elliott and I have a lot of faith and we're experiencing miracle after miracle here! The wheel's really getting some momentum here and we plan to use it!

 

I hope you all have a great week and continue to build your faith that God is preparing people for you to meet and talk to about the Gospel so that it can touch their lives and result in the salvation of many souls!

 

-Elder Guinto

 

E-mail received 8/16/2010

Note:  For some reason Kyle didn't get my e-mail last week so this week he responded to both weeks messages.

I'll respond to both emails so that I don't forget anything. If I leave out any capital letters by accident it's because the shift key on this keyboard doesn't work very well. Neither does the "a" key. First off, awesome drawing Maleah! It looks really good. I can tell you're getting a lot better. I did want to ask if Maleah ended up going to girls camp but it sounds like she did and it sounds like it was a blast! That's awesome that Maleah got to bear her testimony in a lesson with the missionaries. We always try and have a member be there when we teach because really members bear the best testimonies. While ours are always strong, we still will always come off as "The business face of the church." That's really great. I encourage you to continue to develop and use that powerful testimony that you have to benefit, bless and strengthen the testimonies and lives of others. I hope to read in the other email how that baptism went!

-Elder Guinto

P.S. Thanks for the extra money. I'll definitely use it. I've budgeted out the money that I do have pretty well so that I should be able to get by for the rest of the month though so I'll probably use it to buy pants and shoes once I get to November. Thanks for your support!

Woa that's crazy that Jason Hensley's already coming home! That feels like it was just yesterday. It's already hard to believe that I'm coming up on my year mark. I feel like I'm still fresh in the mission field. Alright so I'm going to assume you put in 125 and not 100 like you said in your last email but like I said in the earlier emails I'm probably not going to use it for food. One thing that my time in Paterson taught me was how to be thrifty and wise with the missionary support fund that we get. Also the reason that the msf became a problem wasn't exactly the missions fault. (Just to dispel any bad feelings.) Someone got a hold of Elder Coffin's card information and then tried to put a huge charge on it so the bank locked his card. The mission gave me extra money to help us to get by while Elder Coffin got a new card. When he got his card back, because the bank had locked the card on the first charge, Elder Coffin still had the money that he would've had. So instead of going through a big hassle of transferring money I asked the elder in charge of finance to take the money I had received and just deduct it from the following month. I thought Elder Coffin and I would remain together so it wouldn't have affected anything but then he got transferred. So that's what happened. All is well!

Thanks for sending the stuff. I'll send you the new sd card, which has a ton of pictures on it, as soon as I get them. I'm looking forward to having slippas again and to the letter from Brittany, but then again her writing me back soon probably means that I'll get it in a few months or so. Sounds like around my birthday would be a good guess. Hopefully not but I'll plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Sounds like you're having a fun time dentally. That's not going to be a pleasant thing to go through but I hope that it all goes smoothly. I can't say getting my wisdom teeth pulled was a particularly fun experience but I definitely wouldn't say it's horrible. 

Sounds like Olympia's just been spiritually rocked! Baptisms and a visit from an apostle?! What luck! Or divine providence! I wish I could've been able to meet him and hear the words and counsel of an apostle of the Lord! But I am satisfied with my lot.  (Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke at our stake conference this past weekend.)

We had a pretty good week this week. We had great experiences as we worked with the members this week. We received a lot of referrals and this week will be spent contacting them all. We also had this guy that Elder Coffin and I contacted on the street a couple weeks ago just show up to church with his daughter! It's been a week of miracles. This one investigator, who I haven't been able to teach for the time that I've been here because she's so hard to get in contact with, finally met with us and we had an amazing spiritual lesson. We almost got her to commit to baptism but there's a few things that she's got to get in order before she feels like she can make that commitment. It's not an if but a when for her at this point. We also set a baptismal date with another one of our investigators who we've been working with a lot so that was a great thing to do as well. We hit the streets hard this week and we found a lot of potential but unfortunately none of them began investigating right away. We're following up with a lot of them this week and we have faith that the Spirit will prick their hearts. There was this one guy who thought that Christ might actually be the devil but he was so intrigued that there was another testament of Jesus Christ that he took the Book of Mormon with almost a hunger. It was a really cool experience.

We're excited for what this week will bring. We're going with kind of the same plan with the exception of we have a lot more potential for the week as far as new investigators. 

I hope that you guys have a great a week as we're going to have and have a chance to relax after a long hard summer!

-Elder Guinto

E-mail received 8/9/2010

Dear Mom,

 

We had a great week this week! I got my new companion. His name is Elder Elliott. He's fresh from the MTC! He's from Farmington, Utah and comes from a pretty big family. Turns out the MTC taught him like nothing so I'm pretty much training him from scratch! But he's got a really great heart and a fire for obedience so it's turning out to be really easy. It's really just coming down to the nitty gritty of the lessons and also getting used to being a teacher and a missionary. He's really cool though.

 

It's really different training because I've always had companions who were older than me so I really am his introduction to a whole new way of living. It's really interesting how different missionary life is from regular life. I've been immersed in it so long that I can't even remember what it was like to do my own thing.

 

We had some really cool experiences this week. We finally found the first new investigator in a long time. He's a Filipino guy who's really been searching for the truth for a long time. He's really excited to learn about the Book of Mormon and about everything.

 

Our ward mission leader has decided to take a really member focused approach this week as well. With the change in missionaries he's going for really getting the members weekly immersed in actively doing things to help or learn about missionary work. He had us set a ton of appointments with members and then we're going to teach them just like investigators. We're probably going to have a really good week this next week with this new approach and we're excited to see member work take off more than it already is. And it's already the best I've experienced so far! Emerson's the greatest!

 

We had a really cool experience with one of the families in our ward. Saturday evening all of our appointments were falling through and we didn't know where to go and we felt prompted that we should go and visit that family, even though it was unexpected. I've never been in the home of that family either. They were home and we were able to visit with them for a little bit. Turns out they've been swamped with all kinds of things going on with their family company. We tried and tried to see if there was any way that we could help but unfortunately there wasn't much that we could do. However the Spirit did lead us to exactly the scripture that they needed. I read to them from Isaiah 26:3-4 and they really felt the power of that scripture help calm their fears about the really uncertain future. It was a really cool experience.

 

Just a heads up, you'll see one charge from last week for a suit that I bought at goodwill. Brand new, by the way, and fit me perfectly. I'm probably going to try and buy some pants today as well.

 

Thanks so much for all your support and let me know if there's anything that I can do for you guys!

 

-Elder Guinto

 

P.S. If you guys could send me the picture card that I sent you I will send more pictures. Also Elder Elliott got some cookies from his mom. That would be amazing if you sent me some because your cookies are amazing! I love you!

E-mail received 8/2/2010

Sorry this one has taken so long to post.  I spent the week up at girls camp, so I wasn't able to get Kyle's letter until today.  Enjoy!

WOAH!!!! That is so crazy! My jaw seriously dropped to the floor! So much is going on! Michelle almost died and is engaged and Shon's engaged too!? And they're both super soon! That is crazy! I'm totally at a loss for words. I guess I'm happy for them both. So much has happened since I left.

 

That's really good that Kelson and Michael seem to be moving to greener pastures. Hopefully Chris and Stephanie will be a good influence on Kelson and get him to rearrange his life a little bit. Sounds like God is doing some massive humbling on all fronts.

 

Thanks for getting me Brittany's address. I've decided that I'm only using email to communicate with family and so I wanted that. She emailed me today so I just sent her a short email telling her the new policy. I'm trying to really focus in on doing great work here.

 

Life in Emerson was actually pretty laid back this week. A lot of our investigators and many member families all went on vacation this week and so we didn't have much work to do. Plus, due to all the trips that we had to make in July, we were completely out of miles and so we were left walking in a gigantic area. Travel time took a little longer but we got some great exercise.

 

Transfers are tomorrow and Elder Coffin is going somewhere else. I'm really going to miss him because I've had such a good time and learned so much from him. He goes home in six weeks and it's driving him crazy! It's funny because he'll all of a sudden be reminded of it and it's really just something he can't fathom. When you've been out for a while, being a missionary is all that you really know how to do. Going back will really be like beginning a completely different and new life. On top of that, his parents have moved since he left and so he's going home to an entirely different state where he won't know anyone. Crazy!

 

On the upside, I'm going to be a trainer this transfer! I'm going to be getting a missionary straight from the MTC and this will be his first area and I his first companion! It feels so weird because I feel like I was just there yesterday and now I'm going to be doing it! Also, it'll be the first companion that I've ever had who's been in the mission less time than I have. It's going to be a great experience and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm expecting to see a lot of miracles from this faith-filled greenie!

 

This week should be great. We're spending most of today seeing people because Elder Coffin's been in this area a while and wants to make sure he says goodbye to all the great people here.

 

I'll have a lot to update you guys on next week but for now keep the excitement that goes on there to a minimum if you would. Have a great week!

 

-Elder Guinto

 

P.S. Hey girls, read your scriptures!