I'M COMING HOME!!!!!!

Hey mom and dad and family!!

GUESS WHAT?! ITS HERE!!!!!!!! I'm coming home!! Just wanted to let you know that I won't have my iPad by this afternoon probably, so if you have anything you needed me to know, you better say it fast haha. Just FYI, I'm bringing a bunch of quarters in case I need to call you at the airport for whatever reason. Hopefully everything works out and I actually get home. Knowing our family, though, I'll probably end up taking a wrong plane or missing a flight and it'll end up being a tiring, stressful, expensive experience
trying to get me home ;) haha jk! I'll do my best to not screw up!!
Alright have a good one!! I LOVE YOU! This'll be my last email as
Elder Stafford :(

 Me and Brother Downer (one of my favorite members of the ward)

 The whole zone

 My last district :(

Had to get a door knocking picture before I left ;)

Exhaustion Has Set In

Hello all!! This week was pretty good!! For some reason my body has
just been way out of sync, though. I've been feeling exhausted like
all day long. Annoying! I got a priesthood blessing, though, so that
will help. My body has just decided that it doesn't want to fall
asleep at 10:30 anymore or wake up at 6:30. I've always been pretty
good about actually getting up at 6:30, but recently my body just
isn't letting me...really weird.
But anyways...so Anthony (our only investigator really) is doing
really well. He came to church again like he promised and he's loving
it! He's really excited to get baptized. We had a lesson with him on
Sunday after church which was awesome! We taught him about the
Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about the Book of Mormon
and all that good stuff. Always my favorite lesson if everything goes
really well.
There has been one hiccup with me and Elder Unice, though. I've just
noticed over this cycle that we have a really hard time teaching
together for whatever reason. It just doesn't seem like we can see
where the other person is going with what they're saying. He has a
tendency to go off on tangents very easily, and he mentions a lot of
stuff that really has nothing to do with what we're talking about, and
so it's hard to rally everyone back to what it is we're actually there
to teach. There are some things that I need to work on, as well
though. Because I've been on my mission so long, and because I feel
like I've developed a really good way to present the doctrine so that
it makes sense to the investigator, I get frustrated when my companion
(usually when it's newer missionaries) kind of goes out of order with
things or he skips something really important that needs to be
mentioned, and so I almost feel like I have to clean up everything he
said so that the investigator isn't confused anymore. I don't know.
Does that make sense? Really I've just got a lot of pride that I need
to work on haha. I guess I just kind of forgot that I didn't have
everything right my third cycle in the mission, either. Heck! I still
don't have it right... :)

So the other thing that's kind of been going on is a little drama with
our Ward mission leader haha. His name is Ray and he's just got a few
quirks that have been really bothering the missionaries in the Ward.
He's a SUPER great guy, don't get me wrong, though. He is retired and
single and so he doesn't have a whole lot to do, and so he invests a
TON of effort into being a Ward mission leader. He takes it sooo
seriously haha...which is good! He makes stuff like charts and
spreadsheets and all sorts of other things to organize
everything/everyone. The only problem is that he's kind of got it in
his head that he's the "boss" of the missionaries in the Ward. He
feels that it's his responsibility to direct how the missionaries do
their work in the Ward...which is not the case at all. The Ward
mission leader is really the connection between the efforts of the
full time missionaries and the efforts of the Ward. So there's just
been some drama and frustrations (a good amount on my part haha)
because we feel like he's trying to get us to submit to what HE wants
done and who HE wants us to visit...and all sorts of other stuff that
we don't need to get into. But it's just been fun. He's gotten a lot
better recently, though.
I feel bad, though, because he picks on poor Elder Unice a lot. Unice
kind of asks for it just with his personality, but Ray can be kind of
short with him especially because he's a newer missionary and so he
doesn't think he knows what he's doing yet. I was really upset after
our last Coorelation meeting because I was on a split with the other
elders in my district, and so I couldn't make it, but I heard that
Unice just got put down pretty hard by Ray. He was trying to figure
out what we had done that week and what we needed help with or
something, and Unice was kind of struggling to remember and just kind
of stumbled trying to figure everything out on his own, and so I think
Ray was kind of making him feel dumb or something. I think that Ray
knows that there's no way in heck I would have put up with that, but
because I wasn't there he did. Idk...we're probably just overreacting,
but I'm sure it'll work out eventually.

So just went to the city for my last official p-day :( next p-day
we're going to the temple with our mission president, and then after
that I'll be on a plane home! Holy moly...it's all just happening way
too fast! It was lots of fun, though! We went to Chinatown to buy a
knock-off Rolex (super super expensive watch brand...they're usually
like $2,000-$10,000) for $30 ;) hahaha. Then after that we just kind
of walked around and soaked it in one last time :( next week we won't
have hardly any time at all in the city, so this was probably the last
time I'll walk those magical streets until we come back to visit!!

Well, I gotta go, but I love you all so much. Have an awesome week!! :)

Little Miracles...Just Do It For The Right Reasons/ The Countdown Begins!!!!

Hey hey everyone!! 

This week was great! We've actually slowly slowly
slowly started to see some miracles and successes. Tracting
has...still not been super successful, but it's cool because every day
we get out there, we see a little more success. We've even had a few
people that seemed pretty interested in having us come over again!
Although they've all juked us....haha :) but it's all good! We're
seeing miracles in other places for sure. There is a member that has
brought her friend to church the last two weeks and we got to talk to
him after church, and it looks like he's seriously considering being
baptized! He's a really cool guy and so far we think he's felt the
spirit for sure. The only thing we're worried about is that the first
week he came to church, they were "friends", but then this week when
they came they are dating haha. So we just want him to be doing this
for the right reasons is all.
So funny story, before I got to this area, the missionaries here were
out tracting and as they were walking down the street in this kind of
ghetto part of town, they ran into this wad of cash just laying on the
ground. And when I say wad of cash...I mean a WAD! I think they said
that it was about $6500 dollars in hundreds and fifties....yeah. So
they freaked out because hey thought that it was drug money or
something, and so they called the police and they came and picked it
up. So long story short, the police told them that if no one came to
the station to claim it within 60-90 days, it was all theirs. Luckily
the person that it belonged to came to the station looking for it,
though, and it turns out that this guy had dropped this huge pile of
money walking down the street and it was like the rent or something
for his families house or whatever! Anyways, so he was like sooooooo
grateful and so shocked that they were actually honest enough to say
something and not just put it in their pocket and leave. The guy said
that he'd want to go out to dinner with us sometime, so hopefully we
can maybe turn that into a teaching opportunity!

Well, isn't it so sad that Elder Perry died :( I was so sad after we
heard about that. He was so great! One of my favorites!! I just love
love love the way that he would bear his testimony so firmly. He would
almost growl as he said it haha! But something that I will always
remember about him is his intense commitment to unite all Christian
faiths together. He really taught me that just because not everyone
believes the same way we do, it doesn't mean that we're not on the
same team. We're all on Christ's team! When he was at some convention
with people of all sorts of different faiths, he spoke and you know
what he did? He challenged every single one of those denominations to
double their worship service attendance or something! Haha. That's a
man who really understood the meaning of "love thy neighbor" not just
"love thy friends who think just like you do". What a spiritual giant!
I'm interested to find out who will replace him, though. We are all
thinking that President Morgan is going to take his spot at the end of
the month ;)

Well, that's about all I got as far as news! Only three more weeks
until I'll get to see most of you! I'm really excited! :) I'm gonna
cry so hard when I have to leave, though....but luckily that's not for
a few more weeks. Hope you're all happy and healthy :) love you all!

-Elder Stafford