November 21, 2011 Email Last Transfer!

Yep, today is the start of my last transfer... Crazy. Transfer calls came and it looks like I will 'die' in a threesome. It's cool though. I have two awesome companions so it's all good. So we had a great week. Paul is progressing very well. He should be baptized in 2 weeks. He's awesome. It's fun reading the B.O.M with him. He pronounces 'yea' like 'ya' : ) Another investigator that is progressing SUPER well is Mayanin. Elder Barrow and I street contacted her like a month ago. She is like in her 60's and is one of the nicest people I've ever met. She's told us how she feels like there is something missing inside of her. After studying with us the past few weeks, she believes that what we are sharing might just be the thing to fill the emptiness : ) She's amazing. I've never taught someone who scrutinizes the scriptures like she does. Last time we taught her, she had 2 pages of notes and questions that came up during her study of the Book of Mormon. It's awesome! She basically has a testimony of everything- but she was nervous about what her husbands reaction would be. We met with him on Wednesday. Turns out he's super friendly too : ) They both came to church yesterday and seemed to have a great experience! Please keep them in your prayers.

We also started teaching a husband and wife and her 3 kids on Saturday. They're the 3 kids that we've been helping a member teach English to for the past 3 or 4 weeks. They arrived here from El Salvador 6 months ago and they are awesome. They came to church as a family for the second time yesterday. So that is very exciting. Pray for them too please : ) So we are busy and happy. We are going to play B ball again at the stakecenter today with a bunch of other elders. Always a good time.

For Thanksgiving we're going to be eating very well- Hno Ruiz, the professional Chef/caterer in our ward has invited us over : ) He's good. We've already eaten stellar lamb and fle-ming-yan? made by him. It still probably won't be as good as the food from Grandma D up in Logan, but it should be a close second : ) Well thank you for all your prayers and support! I hope everyone has time to stop and think about all of the fantastic blessings we recieve from our loving Heavenly Father this week. Especially us as members- WE ARE SO BLESSED!!!!! I love you all!!! -Elder Flake

Thanks for the updates from my friends Mom! They are all doing great! Good to hear. I will send you some pics maybe next week? Don't bother sending the memory card back this time. These last 6 weeks are gonna fly by. I would love to be able to come home in time to see all the fam together, but I feel that I need to stick it out to the end. I believe some other missionaries already tried to ask anyways and got shut down. Thank you for signing me up for DSC though! What day will I start classes? Tell Nate I say Hi back and tell Kaity Datwyler thanks for the letter and also wish Andy good luck on his scholarships for me please! I love you Mom! Thanks so much for all that you do for me!

Your son, Elder Flake

November 14, 2011

Hi Mom : )

I printed off your talk and look forward to reading it later. It's true that the youth in today's world have their work cut out for them in order to stay on the straight and narrow. I would say a little more so here in California than back there in Utah. There are a lot of lost and confused youth walkin around these streets. You can almost always smell marijuana when we are walking around at night. There are also a lot of very young parents here.

We are teaching quite a bit of youth. Paul being one of them. We took him up to see the Visitor Center Friday night. He loved it. He loves to learn and loves coming to church. Good kid. So sorry this is really short, but we got to run. Things are good. We are staying busy and having fun. I'm glad Andrew had fun on his date. Hope you all have a great week.

Love Elder Flake

November 7, 2011

Hello Father!

How do you feel to be a Grandpa again? Older? Ha ha. That was exciting news. Dillon... So do you feel more comfortable conducting now on Sundays? I feel a little more comfortable teaching District meetings now after teaching them for about half my mission. It also helps that I'm a Co-District Leader along with Elder Barrow. We get to share the load. We get along well with our newest addition Elder Hoggan. He's fun. We quote a lot of movies (including the Grinch : ) to entertain ourselves in the apartment and when we are on the go. He was a big band geek before the mission, like my trainer, Tyler Burton, who asked for your number today so he could call you guys.

Our recent convert, Irma Matute is doing great. She is always reaching out to others and she loves serving us. We are teaching this cool kid Andrew's age named Paul right now. We brought him to church yesterday, and he liked it alot, but he's too mature for all of the youth in our ward. But we'll figure something out. This whole family (parents and 3 teenagers) that we just started teaching came to church yesterday. They are awesome. They are friends of a family in the ward and we have been helping a member friend of theirs teach the three kids English once a week for a few weeks now. It seems to be paying off. They are fun.

We've been doing more splits lately with members which helped us be able to teach 9 lessons last Thursday. That was a record for all of us. It was crazy. Things are good. I'm VERY well fed and happy here. The members love to feed us. We are still trying to run about every morning so hopefully that will help counter the increased food intake. Also I think my metabolism is still working great : )

Well thank Mom and Andrew for me for there e-mails. I'm writing Andrew a letter today. That's a cool experience Mom had with prayer. I've had several experiences similar to that during my mission. Prayer is great. Well I best be off. Thanks for your great example and all you do.

Love Elder Flake

November 1, 2011 Steve Young Fireside

Congratulations Lindsey and Carlton!!!

I have a nephew!!! I look forward to helping Carlton teach little Dillon how to throw a ball when I return : ) Looks like he has a lot of hair. Is that as much hair as Andrew had when he was born? So where did the names Dillon and William come from? Sounds like a good strong name : ) Very exciting... So I imagine Lindsey had a pretty content birthday with the arrival of the baby : ) I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween yesterday and you all have a feliz dia de los muertos manana.

So the big news for the week in my neck of the woods is that I am now in a 3 some again! Elder Hoggan from American Fork has joined forces with us. He's a really good missionary and we are excited to have him. He was serving in the Bolivia Cochabamba mission (which one did Heather serve in and which mission is T.J in again?) but then he had to go home for some medical reasons and now he's with us : )

President wants us to double our work by going on splits all the time with members so we should be able to cover alot more ground now. It's a little tight now, as far as living space goes, but we have more room than the 2 months that I was in a 3 some back in Hollister ;) In the 4 or 5 months Elder Hoggan was in Bolivia, he sure learned alot of Spanish. He speaks better than me.

Also this weekend, I had the chance to 'become friends' with one of my childhood heros... Steve Young! He's in my stake and he held a fireside Sunday night for the youth. I called us friends because he explained in the beginning of his talk that one of his goals of the night was to make friends with all of us : ) He did so by telling us some of his childhood experiences and fears. He was a moma's boy growin up ;) He also talked a lot about faith and how he had to have faith as an nfl quarterback when he would have to throw to his receivers (namely Jerry Rice) without seeing them because he was too short. He has a very strong testimony. It was awesome.

Well I got to get, but my congrats to the new parents and I look forward to meeting my new nephew : ) Love Elder Flake

October 24, 2011

No baby yet, huh? Maybe he/she will have the same B-day as Lindz? that would be cool. Well I'll be sure to keep her and the new baby in my prayers this week as well then.

Well, Irma Matute got baptized and confirmed this weekend!!! The service was great. We had a really good turnout from the ward and the spirit was strong. She felt so good, a lot of relief. Irma is such a great person. If she isn't doing something for someone, she isn't happy. Kind of reminds me of my grandmas and you mom : ) Irma always wants to make us food- and she even gave us a gift bag and thank you card on the night of her baptism! She is still going through tough times with her marriage and also with some immigration problems, but now with the gospel, she has so much more hope facing these problems. It has been a great blessing to get to know her and help teach her. The whole Matute family is just awesome. So life is still muy bien here on the Peninsula.

Elder Barrow is from Houston Texas. I served along side him in Salinas for 6 months. He's awesome. We get along wonderfully. He goes home 6 weeks after me. He speaks the language so well and is a great teacher. We get up and go running at 6a.m almost every morning. We both love sports and climbing on things. We both just laughed when President Watkins told us we were going to be together. We couldn't believe it.

So we have a ton of good investigators right now- it's amazing how the Lord is just putting boat loads of people in our path. As of right now, it looks like our biggest challenge will be getting them all to church. Many of them have road blocks that keep them from coming to church on Sunday at 9 a.m. We are going to try harder to get each of them a member friend. We think that should help. It is fantastic teaching 20+ lessons a week- all pretty much to investigators.

So for the first time since Fremont I'm back in a zone where all of us missionaries are close together. So we are going to be playing a lot of sports. Last week we played a bit of football, rugby and ultimate Frisbee. It was a good time. Well thanks to all those who keep me and us missionaries in your prayers. I invite you all to rise up and be better missionaries yourselves. It's not easy but the Lord will help us! Make it a great week!

Love Elder Flake

October 17, 2011

Hey Dad : )

Glad to hear you had a good b-day. Tennessee tacos. I need to make some of those one of these days. It's been too long. I ate like a dozen pupusas this week. They're a staple/delicacy of El Salvador. There are a couple families in the ward from there. I don't know how to describe pupusas or exaclty what's in them, but they're good.

This was the first Sunday my whole mission where I saw a full chapel in a sacrament meeting. It's a beautiful sight. I talked about the Book of Mormon in my talk. I used a little bit of Elder Callister's talk from conference, including the line example and how the Book of Mormon helps us clarify the doctrine of Christ. It was fun.

Also this week we made a trip to the Oakland Temple with some investigators : ) Norma and her 11 year old Jazmyn and 6 year old Diandre. We all felt the Spirit and the idea of an eternal family sunk into them. I love the temple! I hadn't been to the visitor center in a while and I saw for the first time the new Lucy Mack Smith narrated version of the 'Prophet of the Restoration', and also they added a scene or 2 to the "God's Plan for the Family" feature. The first scene looked to be filmed in Southern Utah, Snow Canyon maybe? I love God's plan for the family! It's fool-proof :)

That's exciting Lindsey could have a baby this week. Let her know that she's in my prayers! So it was a great first week here. We taught like 22 lessons and found 9 new investigators. It's awesome to be teaching so much. Elder Barrow is really good at engaging people and slipping into teaching them before they even know what is happening ;) We are very excited for Irma Matute who will be baptized this Friday. She's a very special person and was super prepared to accept the Gospel. She joins her mother and 3 sisters who are also members. Awesome family. Now we need to work on the men.

Well we got to get going. Hope you have a nice trip to Philly. I'm excited to see pics of my new niece or nephew :) Thank Darrell for me for coming down to help you and Andy finish the job.

Love Elder Flake

October 12, 2011 Transferred to Palo Alto

Hi Mom! I'm in Palo Alto!!!

This is one of, if not the best wards in the mission! We received like 5 referrals yesterday and had 3 member presents my first day here! There are 7 people being taught right now who have solid baptismal dates! It's crazy! Yesterday we just drove from appointment to appointment! It's heaven! I'm paired up with Elder Barrow, a buddy I worked closely with for 6 months down in Salinas! He's a fantastic missionary! I'm already learning a lot from him. I am SO blessed to be here and am excited to serve here until the day I come home.

So our apartment is in Menlo Park, the church building is in Red Wood City, and we do most of our work in East Palo Alto. I'm just 20 miles down the road from San Fran! There are so many trees here! So different than Salinas. It's beautiful. I'm actually just right across the bay from Fremont, where I started out. There is so much work here. It's going to be a fun 3 months. Yesterday I got to meet Irma. She is a really sweet lady from El Salvador who was just flat out not happy with life, then Elder Barrow and his former companion, taught her every day last week, cause she was just eating it up, and now she's happy! The Gospel brings happiness!

Thank you so much for the package! Elder Gile and I loved the bread and jam. The Davidson's said they really enjoyed their visit with you, and are very grateful for the cook book, and the shepard thing. My last night, they made our whole dinner from recipes in the cook book! It was awesome. Good people. I'm going to miss Elder Gile and a lot of the members there in Salinas. I pray everything works out for Gloria. The last we heard is she was in Yuma working in the lettuce there. She's in a tough spot financially. We'll try and get in contact with her and send the missionaries to her down there. Well I love you very much and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to finish my mission here on the peninsula. Exciting stuff is going on. I'll fill you in on more next week: )

Love Elder Flake