Staying in Whitehorse

So it was another interesting week as always is the case in Whitehorse. Last P-day we spent some time playing and recording music at Bro. McDonald's again. It's always fun. We are going over there again today to play more. It's going to be hard when I have to leave this place and won't get to play anymore.

So Holly and Christopher are both getting baptized on April 10th! I can't remember if I mentioned that last week or not. I'm really looking forward to seeing both of them enter the waters of baptism and be confirmed members of the church. This will be the first time on my mission that I will get to see someone I started teaching get baptized. They are a great family. On Wednesday we helped Holly's husband Chris put in a drop ceiling in their basement. We didn't finish so we are going again this week to help him finish. He's a good guy, and we always have fun at their house. We also taught Robert again this week, and he had finished reading the entire Book of Mormon! It was awesome to see that he accomplished that, and had hand written like 30 pages of notes, but it was a little sad to see him still skeptical about all of it. We taught him the importance of prayer and faith, and had a great lesson. It's amazing to see how even when someone has been given (and read) such an awesome witness of the Savior like the Book of Mormon they still can't feel that it's true unless they pray and ask our Father in Heaven if it really is true. I know that once Robert feels the Spirit he will know for sure that it is the word of God.

Well, it's the beginning of a new transfer, and probably my last in Whitehorse. It's going to be really hard to leave, but I know if I work my hardest it will feel right to move on to another area to serve. I've been greatly blessed to serve in Whitehorse, and have the experiences I've been able to have here. Well have a great week!

Love Mat

Another Great Week

So it's been an incredibly fast week in Whitehorse. A lot has happened this past week. We jammed again with Bro. Mcdonald on Monday, and we've decided we're going to try and make a CD of the songs we've been playing. We'll be working on that today. They're all church songs so don't worry. It's been fun working on them.

We've been having some great experiences with our investigators here. On Thursday we taught a guy named Robert. We told him he needed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, so he got an audio book of the Book of Mormon on line and put it on his ipod. He listened to over half of the book while following along with the book in his hands. He had written out four pages of notes and questions, and we had a great lesson. He's noticed that he's "hard hearted" (he's already getting down the book of Mormon lingo haha), and I think he's realizing the importance of our message. Nicole's brother and mom are doing awesome, and they will both be baptized next month. We're looking forward to that! This will be the first time on my mission that I will have been able to see the entire process of the investigator starting to take the lessons to being baptized. We also started teaching a hindu couple, and it's great because the second counselor in the branch presidency is a converted hindu so he will help us teach and translate.

Great things are happening here, and I'm loving every day. Well, sorry for the short one today, but I will have more to report on next week!

Being a Missionary is Awesome!

Hey Mom,

How's Utah? Are you back in Vegas yet? It's good that you get all these mini vacations, if you want to call them that, and get to see Ty and everyone. Sounds like fun. Well, hopefully I get to stay here for one more transfer. I really love it in this area. There's a chance that I could leave at the end of this month, on I think the 28th, but I think I will stay one more.

Each week here I have some amazing experiences. The work was slower than usual this week, but we still had some amazing success. First of all, Holly, Nicole's mom, committed to be baptized!!! We're so excited! We're not quite sure when it will be, but Nicole's brother Christopher will be getting baptized on April 2. I'm so happy that their whole family is welcoming in the gospel into their lives. I can't wait to see them baptized! We're teaching a lot of people right now, more than double that I've ever taught at once on my mission. I can't believe how much the Lord has been blessing us.

On Thursday Elder Stephens and I were giving service at the Salvation Army serving the food at lunch, and he noticed a guy that was kind of eyeing us weird. I didn't notice it because I couldn't see him from where I was standing. Later that day we were walking into the hospital to give someone a blessing, and the same guy was approaching us from the hospital. He came and started talking to us right away, and said that he was too nervous to say something at the Salvation Army, but he was a less-active member and wanted to turn his life around and come back into the gospel. He had just moved in so he wasn't on the church records or anything. We went and saw him yesterday where he's living, and he's a really cool kid who sincerely wants to come back and participate in the gospel again. It was awesome to be able to help him out. This is the second time something like this has happened to me, if you remember my experience I had in Wasilla. The Lord definitely guides us to be in the right place at the right time to accomplish His purposes. I'm so grateful to be having these experiences. They are definitely changing the way I look at life and how I can be a help to others. Being a missionary is awesome!

Love Mat

Ten Investigators

Hola Madre,

It's been a great week, and Elder Stephens and I have had some awesome experiences due to what we learned at Zone Conference last week. Nicole's brother is supposed to be getting baptized on March 20, and we hope all will go well in preparing him for that. We're teaching her mom now too, and I know that soon she will also be baptized. I just hope I can be here to see it. Elder Stephens and I have been working really hard to get this area moving and progressing, and right now we have ten investigators! That's the most I've ever had in my mission so far. Awesome things have been happening here in Whitehorse.

So On Saturday night I got to see the Northern Lights for the first time!! It was awesome! Everyone says that this year has been the worst year for northern lights they have ever seen, but they finally came out. One of the members here lives out in the forest basically, and he gave us a call one night and said they were out. It was awesome because they usually come out really late when they do come out, but it was pretty early, so we got to see them. We drove out of town to get away from the city lights, and we watched them. They weren't too bright at first, but then they lit up and started dancing around the sky with green and yellow colors. It was amazing to see. At one point in the "show" the lights looked like a bunch of spirits lined up at the gates of heaven and there was a bright point at the end like it was Christ welcoming them in. It probably sounds weird to you, but Elder Stephens and I both thought the same thing. It was cool. Well, this has been a great week, and I hope you are all doing well!!!

Love Mat

Zone Conference in Juneau

Hey Mom!

So I literally just got back to Whitehorse. We came straight to the church so we could email. Today is supposed to be P-day, but we've been traveling most of the day, and we have a lesson at 4, so we pretty much just aren't really having a p-day this week. I'm extremely tired from all our traveling. I'll tell you about that in a sec, but first of all, that's awesome that Daniel made the team! He's such an awesome kid. I knew he could make it.

So I might have to include more things about our trip another week. The trip was awesome! Southeast Alaska is the most beautiful part of Alaska I've seen, and I've seen more beautiful places than most missionaries! On Sunday, Elder Stephens and I stayed for the first part of Sacrament meeting so we could take the sacrament, and hear Nicole give her first talk as a member of the church. It was a great talk. We left right after, and got the truck packed up and headed for Skagway. We drove through carcross, into British Columbia (which, I might add is a different mission, so it's pretty awesome when you don't just get permission to leave your area, but to leave the entire mission), and then back into the USA. It felt good to cross that border, even though I really love Canada. The drive was really amazing, and we got to see some intense wilderness and scenery. It took us a couple of hours to make it to Skagway from Whitehorse. Skagway is tiny, and there's hardly anyone there in the winter, but it's a beautiful little city, and it felt really good to be back by the ocean again. The weather was pretty bad, and the drive there was kind of sketchy. It was raining and then snowing really heavily in Skagway, so the airport workers told us we might not even be able to leave Skagway til the next morning, and might have to spend the night with some members in Skagway, or at the little chapel there. The pilot flew in, and kind of rushed us on the plane so we could beat some of the bad weather and thick fog. We boarded a little ten passenger, single prop bush plane, and took off quickly towards Juneau. It was an awesome flight. The pilot had to fly low to stay out of some of the weather, so we could see some great things, Elder Stephens said he saw some whales.

We stopped in Haines to pick up some people, and then headed off to Juneau. It is an amazing place. It's very picturesque, and is how you see Alaska depicted on TV and in pictures. Well, we stayed the night with the zone leaders and missionaries from Petersburg, Sitka, and Ketchikan. Zone Conference was amazing, and Brother Watson came and talked to me about meeting you guys at church. He said you were great people, and he said he picked on Daniel a lot during priest's quorum. He taught us a ton, and what I learned will really change the way I do missionary work. It was great to see the missionaries in the Juneau zone gather together from far places and have a great spiritual experience together. The flight back to Skagway was even more amazing than the one to Juneau because the skies were clear, and you could see all of the white mountain peaks and the glaciers and a lot of green. What a great experience we had taking that journey. We stopped in Skagway for lunch, and now we're back in the Yukon. Well, it's been a great week, and many awesome things lie ahead here in Whitehorse. I love you all!

Love Mat