Tuesday, December 20, 2011

December 20, 2012 Dawson's 21st Birthday

We had another great week : )
Mayanin has chosen January 7th to be baptized! We are ecstatic for that, I'm just a little bummed that I will just miss it : ( But as long as she gets baptized! The Gospel has done so much for her and it has been such a testimony builder for me to witness it. She is such a nice lady, and so determined to do what she knows is right- despite much opposition.

Also the fam 5- well at least the Mom and the kids for now- are committed to be baptized New Year's Eve! Please keep them in your prayers! Paul isn't doing too hot at the moment. He just has a lot of distractions- including many mandatory community service hours + his girlfriend. But we will keep working with him.

Thanks in advance for the Christmas package! We are having a mission-wide steak and eggs breakfast this Saturday : ) We also caroled at 2 old-folk homes this past week and on Wednesday we will get together as a zone to sing some more : ) It is fun. Just five of us elders sang last week, and I seriously doubt it sounded that good, but the nice elderly folk just smiled and made us feel like we were MoTab ; )

Today we are going to get together as a zone again to play sports at the stake center. We are going to try and get a cool investigator named William there. He's the 17 year old son of the fam 5. Welp, I'm excited to talk to ya'll on Christmas : ) I will probably be calling around 2-2:30 California time. So have a great week and talk to you soon : )
Love Elder Flake

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

December 12, 2011 Email


Elders and Sisters help set up for the Christmas Creche display.

This young lady was recently baptized and below are her friends, family,
and ward members at her baptism.


Hi Mom : )
First of all, thanks so much for my B-day package! Good ol' summer sausage...
To answer your questions...
We will be eating Christmas brunch + make our phone calls at the Ruiz home- the same family that fed us Thanksgiving : ) It will probably be after church which would be around 1:00 or 2 maybe? California time. Because I will be seeing ya'll the following week (Will everyone still be there on the fourth?) I'd just assume doing the regular old phone call, if that sounds good to you. I know there family does have at least one computer with gmail chat capabilities. I'll find out if they have more. I guess it would be cool to see the new baby boy. I still have not heard anything about flight plans yet either. I will ask President in my E-mail today about that.

I can't think of anything really for the Christmas package. But I thank you in advance for it : ) I have a memory card for the camera, so don't worry about sending me the other one. A member photagrapher from one of the Palo Alto wards took us and 2 other companionships to Stanford Campus to take pics this morning. It was a good time and the pictures are going to look legit. We had another busy week. We found 10 new investigators this week- and we're not even focusing on finding! We have alot of people close to baptism right now. Hopefully I'll see at least one or two before I return. Well thank you for all you do Mom- you're the best : ) Have a fantastic week.
Love your son, Elder Flake

Broseph! I don't even no what CTE stands for! But congrats! You're the man! : )
So we had a really busy week last week. We found a lot of new people which means we got to teach the restoration a lot! I love teaching the restoration. You're going to be such a better prepared missionary than I was because when I get back we are going to study preach my gospel together, and practice teaching, sound good?

Hey so I've been thinking a little bit about what I wanted to do- carreer wise- and then last night I had a dream, I don't remember much, but you and I and some boys from the hood were there, and we were catchin critters! It's actually a theme I've drempt about various times on my mission. And then I thought, that would be a fun job, catchin critters. And then I remembered that that's what Seth Topham does for a living! So I might look into that field when I get back. What do ya think? Sounds like a pretty fun job, right? Ha ha, well we'll see what happens with that...

So you have not yet met our nephew as well, is that correct? I'm excited to meet him : ) Are you doin the 12 days this year? Are you keeping up with putting the stars on the tree? Are you doin nice things so you can put straw in the Baby Jesus' cradle? Ah... so many fun Christmas traditions... Well Bro, take care and spread the Spirit of Christmas every where you go, ok?

Love your bro, Elder Flake

Monday, December 5, 2011

December 5, 2011 Email

Hello Mom : )
Thank you for getting the garments to me in such a timely fashion. I'm glad you are all feeling better from your bout with the flu. I have been very blessed with my health throughout my mission thanks to that awesome blessing. It's been pretty cold here the last few weeks. But it's snowed here only like once in the past century so my chances for a white Christmas are pretty slim. We've had a pretty good week, teaching a lot. I'm starting to wonder if maybe we are spreading ourselves too thin. Maybe if we focused more on specific people we would have more baptisms and more less actives back in church. Something for us to think about...
Mayanin is showing amazing courage by continuing on with us, despite heavy opposition from her family. She is the first person in her family in recorded history to study with a different church. Her brother and her daughter are especially giving her a hard time about meeting with us. Obviously the spirit is working with her, to see her continuing on despite putting cherished family relationships in jeapordy. It's a testimony building experience for me to witness. Thank you for praying for her.
So I don't know if I've mentioned much about the Zamora family, but it's a couple- not married - nonetheless they have 11 kids together, that the missionaries and ward alike have been working on for years now. We taught them and 9 of their kids all at once the other night. It was crazy. Like half of the kids are already baptized. Hermano Zamora needs to get divorced/stop drinking first, but both parties have set a goal to be married and baptized in the future. It will be a great day that I won't be here to witness, but we are going to help them continue to make their way towards it
We had zero contact with Paul last week. His phone is off and we can't find him home so that is worrying us. Well I got to get but thank you for all of your prayers. I hope Andy gets the chance to dunk over someone in his city league. I'm super jealous that he has that ability now. Well I love you all.

Love, Elder Flake