Elder Taylor Downs

2011-11-24T18:37:00.000-08:00

Just a short note we got Taylor's flight palns an he get in onThursday the 8th at 8 am. WE are super excited, See you all soon. Just a note Taylor talks in church on the 18 at 9 AM
Love you Mom

Hey whats going on nothing much is going on today. Its really a cold and raining day so its kind of a slow lazy day. Normally its been about 70's this last week or so, but today and yesterday its been really cold. We heard that its going to warm up though tomorrow and get back up to the 60's. It was pretty crazy though it was 81 on saturday, it was super warm and really nice to go out and work. This week was an interesting one. Everything was normal till friday, where we had district meeting and i had to do it and after that we had exchanges with some other missionaries. That was pretty fun it turns out that the elder i was with was on alta's football team when we played them in the playoffs. It was funny to hear him talk about it. He went and played football at snow collage before he came out but he said that he doesn't want to do that anymore, he wants to go walk on at the u or at utah state. He told me to come and do it with him, it was a fun time. A good break from everything that was going on. Then we went to one of the people i baptized and the family when i first got here and they told us the reason why they weren't coming to church anymore and that was frustrating then they started to just go off on the chruch and everybody over there. It was making us so mad, we were about ready to just explode but i was like we have to go, so we did but it was an kind of really frustrating. Other then that we had a good time at church. Our investigator that's going to get baptized on the 3rd came with her kids and stayed the whole time. The kids were a little hesitant to go to primary but we talked to her after and she said that they would rather go to primary then school. I thought that was funny, but also really good. She's on schedule and really excited for baptism. Oh yeah sunday was the primary program it went really good. The kids are always funny. But all in all it was a good sunday. Today we are just relaxing nothing really going on just probably a nap or something like that. That sounds really nice about right now. This week should be fun, we have had 2 people ask us to come over to dinner, but we will probably only make it to the one. Which i'm super excited about it will be a ton of fun. Then on friday we have district meeting and then we will be up in ada on exchanges. Oh i asked the aps about when my flight plans will be sent out and they said that they were going to send them on thursday so they should be coming soon. I don't know who they are going to, you or me. My guess would be just you, so you'll have to let me know when you find out but my guess is that i will be there about 7 or 8 in the morning and leave here around 6 or 6:30. So thats the big news other then that, thats about it. Heres a few pictures that i thought that you would like. The first one is of me on the texas border, i thought that it was cool. The next one is when we went up to a museum in norman there was a big wooley mamonth and i took a picture of me getting stepped on. Then last one is at the musuem also i thought it was funny... i'm a natural wonder haha. Well till next week, only 2 more e-mails and then you can just ask me in person what you want to know. Glad everything is going good back home. Tell everybody i say hi and will see them soon.
Love ya
Elder Downs

November 14, 2011-Email & Pic

2011-11-22T13:37:00.000-08:00

Hey how are you guys doing today? i'm doing really well. It was an awesome week. We spent more time out of our area and in other areas then we did in our own, but oh well it was for a good cause. We have been working with one of our investigators to get them to come to church for the last little while and they showed up yesterday which i was super excited about. She said that she had a great time and that she will be back this next week for church this next week so thats super cool. She has a date now for the 3rd of december and if everything goes like it should she will be baptized on that day which i'm super excited about. To get one more before i head home. We have been working with her for that last 2 months so its cool to see her come this far. We also had 2 of the less actives that we have been working with for the last 3 months show up. IT was awesome! They just came out of the blue. Good things are going on down here and its really cool to see the changes and stuff thats going on. Other then that thats about all the new news. I got my pants and they are awesome thank you. Oh and good news i got a call from a missionary thats coming when i leave and he wants to buy my bike so i'm going to sell it to him for 175 dollars which is a really good deal. So his mom is going to send me a check before transfers. Yeah i know its 23 days left. Well i have to go i have to e-mail some other people today also. Talk to you next week!
Love ya
Elder Downs
P.S. heres a picture of part of our district we played a practical joke on one elder and started cutting everybodies ties in half and he thought that we wouold cut his in half it was funny. Don't worry they were old crapy ties so yeah.

November 7, 2011-Email

2011-11-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

Hey how are things going for you guys?
I'm doing good today, i'm actually up in norman at the library in ou emailing today. We have another zone pday up here so we came up early to email here and to walk around and then later on today we are going to a museum here and then playing something at the stake center when we get done. Then i believe we have a meeting after all of that for a little while. This week has been really good, well it was bad and good at the same time. It started off with some good lessons at the start of the week, then on friday we had a huge bomb of a lesson. It went horrible nothing worked right and he started asking deep questions and we tried to help answer it but it was just going downhill from there. So we hurrried and tried to end it before we do to much damage. So we left and went back to another lesson and that one fell through, but amazingly enough we ended up after dinner having a really good lesson with one of our newer investigators. That was actually a really good lesson and he said he reallly enjoyed it and learned alot. Then after that we went back home and just called it a night. The next day we went to go and help a member roof their house and that was a blast. Funny enough it was except for the last 2 hours that really wasn't to fun. We got over there about 7 in the morning started took an hour for lunch and then went back to it till about 7:30 ish and then we called it and we took off home and colapsed for the night. We took off i think about 5 or 6 layers of shingles and then put all the paper down on the roof and shingled about half of it and then i couldn't move anymore. After about 5 or 6 hours my hand had conformed to the shovels and the hammer and i could barley open it all the way. And my whole body was sore i think i carried about 20 packs of shingles up on the roof so my shoulders hurt and my back was killing so i was super sore after that. The next day i woke up and i tried to sit up and my whole body hurt it was funny but we got up and got ready and studied and went to the chruch for stake conference. Here they broadcast it to all the buildings so that you don't have to go up to norman to the stake center if you don't want to. I think its pretty cool. We got there and were suppose to have one of our investigators come but she didn't so we were disappointed but then all of a suddent he guy we bombed the lesson with showed up with his wife who is a member. Thats the first time i've seen him at church since i've been here so that was a big relief! So after that we went to dinner 45 min away in a small little town. Then we came back just in time for a lesson, which went really well and she is getting excited for baptism. We haven't set another date with her yet but it will probably be the first weekend in december. Then we went back over and had a 100% better lesson with the guy who showed up to church. We found out a lot more about him and his background and tried to listen and teach instead of just talking at him, which worked a lot better. So it kind of had a bad day but it ended up being ok in the end. They got the roof almost finished yesterday i think they have just a little bit left. Stake Conference was really good i was surprised. So thats basically who we are working with right now. We have one is pretty solid and will be baptized sometime, and then another who will probably be baptized sometime in december or january. Which is sad that i am going to miss that. The kitchen look good i didn't even recongize it at all. I'm getting excited and also not wanting to come home. Thats about all the big news for this week not much else is going on this week should be fun also. Thats to bad about the furnace. Hope you can get it fixed pretty soon. Our heater works great and we stay plenty warm. i don't have any pictures right now but i will sometime i'm sure. I'll send home some more when i can. so what kind of a couch are you going to get? Well i have to go and do some other stuff. Talk to you y'all next week!
Love you
Elder Downs

October 31, 2011-Email

2011-11-03T16:35:00.001-07:00

How are you guys doing today? I'm doing really good. Its been a really good week. Not much has been going on. We were working our buts off to get some people to come to church but sadly. They both did not make it. One of them i understand because she is going in for surgery tomorrow, and she wanted to spend time with her family before that happened. She said that if she can she will definetly be at church this next week. She is definetely going to get baptized sometime soon. She wants to start paying tithing, she gave up all the coffee and stuff as soon as she read that in the pamphlet. She is awesome! I think she will be baptized towards the end of the transfer for sure and then we have another one that will be getting baptized hopefully before i head off. Today we are not doing anything, we have been grounded by president. Sadly no one signed up on the calender to feed us so its just going to be us. The ward did a carnival last wendesday, it was kind of dumb and boring not as good as the one in chickasha or back home. We ended up leaving about half hour into it. I got all the stuff for halloween, thanks for the candy and the pictures. Oh i am sending home a box tomorrow or the next day with some stuff that i don't need. Also with my suit pants that have the holes in the back. I was wondering if you could fix those for me and send them back soon. I want to be able to wear that suit in case i have to when we go out and about and not my good one. The ward is doing ok, Elder tuttle and i are doing good. I'm just trying to be more patient and just not worry about that sort of stuff anymore. I haven't heard anything about when i fly home or anything like that. There will be 12 of us flying home. A pretty big group. The weather has been pretty nice around 60 almost everyday. When i get home i think pork steak sounds good or something like that. This week should be really good. We are working hard and i think its really paying off. Actually everybody in my disricit is starting to so i guess my chastising works at district meeting. Well thats about it for today not much going on we are just realaxing today and taking a break. I'll talk to you more next week. Love y'all
Elder Downs

October 25, 2011-Email & Pic

2011-10-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

Hey how are you guys doing?
Well another week gone and by... i can't believe that. Its been an fun week. We got alot done this week and had some amazing lessons with our investigators and we should be having about 3 baptisms in the next month or 2. Elder packer came which was really good for the first little bit, but he had a very monotone voice so by the time his wrap up came i was spacing out pretty bad. It was really good though i learned alot and i used alot of what he said for my talk this last sunday. That was quite the experience... i was the last speaker so i had to cover for what time didn't get used. The youth speaker and my companion i think used 12 minutes between the both of them. When he sat down i was like holy cow thanks for taking a little bit of time. He said i took 10 min. Then i said you were suppose to take 15, he said oh well have fun with it. So i ended up with the rest of the time which was about 25 minutes. I used all the time and didn't end up early or late just perfect. I talked about small and simple things and how that applys to missionary work. A little different then what most people usually talk about when they talk on missionary work. Everybody said it was pretty good so i was ok with that. Oh yeah i'm staying another transfer if you were wondering. I got the phone call last night and i'm ok with it, but my companion is starting to get on my nerves. I really don't like it when people follow me around and thats basically what he does, from room to room. He eats when i do he goes to bed if i do early. Starting to get on my nerves. It will be nice to have just some alone time when i get home when i don't have to worry about anybody else. We had some amazing lessons this week too. Yesterdays was awesome, we took a member with us over to one of our baptismal cannidates and they instantly clicked and were talking more to each other then to us, which was an amazing thing. The lessons went good and she commited to come to church to sit with the member and get a ride from her. If everything goes right she will be baptized on the 19th. We also should have a baptism on the 5th, if he comes to church. Hes been saying he will but doesn't so i don't know if it will happen. Then we have one set for in december. Thats about all the new stuff for this week. I'm doing good. Excited for this next transfer alot of good stuff is going to happen and i'm glad i'm here for it. The ward is doing better. Don't know about thanksgiving yet. Halloween i have no idea either well see what happens... Its pday so we wont get anything done because we can't really go out unless we have appointments. So yeah i'll let you know more next week. Heres the picture of my district after our district meeting. I did a big obedience district meeting and i was getting creative so i had them do like captain moroni and rip shirts, and promise to be obedient and write on them. It went good and was alot of fun.
Love y'all
Elder Downs

October 17, 2011- Email

2011-10-18T17:48:00.001-07:00

Hey whats going on?
i'm doing really good. Its been a really good week for us. We spent alot of time on exchanges this week so we didn't get alot of stuff done here because we weren't here alot but when we were here we got alot done which is really good. We were suppose to have a baptism this weekend but that didn't end up happening. He didn't show up to church which was a big disappointment, but we are planning on having it in about 2 weeks. He's super excited about it but he just needs to come to church on a regular basis. We actually found another really cool investigator this week also. My companion was on exchanges and he found her tracting and we went back this last weekend and she was so excited to see us and said that she loves the book of mormon. Shes like i've always felt drawn to it but i just never asked for one. She told us about how she read it for a few mintues and said i feel like its the truth and she put it down and had a feeling that she wanted to read more and more. It was really cool to hear someone say that, since we haven't heard anybody say that in a while. We set a baptismal date with her for the 19th of november. We are both super excited about it. We also did find one of the less actives in the ward that we haven't been able to see in a while. We got her to say that she would come to church this next week which is awesome. This area is doing awesome right now, i'm really glad that i'm here for this. We also got a call from president. He told us about the big situation in the ward and how the bishop is really glad that i'm here and wants me to stay till i have to go home. He said that i was the pillar that was holding together the ward when it was going through the rough patch. Things are getting better in the ward which is really good, and he also told me that he can't really say no to a bishop that says something like that. He said most likely i will stay another transfer down here with my companion. So it looks like i will end up staying down here. We will know on sunday for sure though. Transfers are on a week from wednesday. I'm excited about staying down here theres alot of good going on here. We did come across one of our recent converts that said she is not going to come because she got her feelings hurt. That was the hardest things to hear because i just wanted to say, so thats nice just grow up a little and go to church. I hate that reason for not going. Most of the time i think they are just looking for an excuse not to go and thats the easiest thing that they can say. Its really frustrating... oh well i have to get going. This week will be fun elder packer from the 70 is coming and i have to talk in church this next week. I guess bishop specifically requested it, so thats good. Well have a good week!
Love Ya
Elder downs

October 12, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-10-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody, its been a great week. They changed alot of stuff recently in the mission, so its been an interesting week to see the changes and how it changes alot of what our focus is now when we go out. They changed the numbers that we report to very few so its not like we have to force things on anybody, but rather to try to really talk to them and get a return appointment. Things have changed so much in the last year and a half. Its not the same mission that i came out to 2 years ago, which i'm kind of jealous i wish it was like this when i came out, but oh well. I found the kid thats from bountiful north stake. I think his name is elder townsen or something like that. i met him yesterday and he said that he was from bountiful and went to viewmont. That makes about 5 from viewmont out here right now. i don't know if i told you about them or not but i knew 2 of them. One of them i was pretty good friends with. It was my goal to serve with him before i leave but i don't think its going to happen, they usually don't listen to me, which i wonder why sometimes. haha... we went on exchanges this last week with the zone leaders which was really fun. It always fun to have other people around to excite things. This week i have to do exchanges with one of the pairs i am over. I'm really not looking forward to it, they are starting to get on my nerves alot. But oh well i can't change it. Oh i don't know if i told you or not but next week we have a mission tour coming through. Elder Allen Packer from the 70 is coming. Its on the 19th which i thinki is next week, i really have no idea i still think were in august so i'm out of it. But that should be interesting, he had all of us write a talk and send it to him. And a few of us will have to give the talk at mission conference. And knowing my luck i will end up doing it. . I think i've said more prayers at church then anybody else. Speaking of the ward its doing ok, hangin in there. Yeah alot of drama is going on which is sparking alot of arguing and side taking so its bad news. Were getting pulled into it too which i saw coming but i'm trying to stay as far out of it as possible but i feel like it will probably end up with us in the middle. I'll have to tell you more about it when i get home, to much to type and my fingers are kind of lazy. We have found some pretty awesome people this week. 2 that i think will go pretty far. One of them, told us that he talked with 3 other sets of missionaries and said he is still trying to find the path that he needs to go down, so we are trying to help him recoginze the answers that he is getting. I'm really excited about that and the other one seems pretty cool too so we will see what happens. We should have a baptism on the 22nd. It is someone that i have been teaching since i've been here and has been taught by others for months. The missionaries before didn't think he was accountable but we asked for outside opinion and they all said that he was, and we both think that he is so we set a date for the 22nd. Hes really excited and is willing to give up coffee to go into the temple and be baptized. My birthday was good. We really didn't do anything special, and didn't have a dinner so it was just a real chill day just normal. We did have fun yesterday though. We had our zone pday in norman with the whole zone. So we went up there and i wanted to go to the OU stadium so we did. I took some pictures but i forgot my camera again... sorry... but i will e-mail them tomorrow. That was really fun, then we went and played a version of dogeball, which was fun. Then after that we showered and had a mini zone conference with out president. That was really awesome, funny thing was that they stole some of the stuff that i said in district meeting the friday before, but oh well. We got another car which is awesome. The car that we had was on its last leg. That was also why we went up to norman yesterday. So i will be talking on the 18th... whats the topic going to be on? Any idea yet? Nope i haven't got my flight stuff yet i bet they come in a few weeks so i'll let you know when i get it, but you will also get it so you'll know when i know. Everybody usually flys out at about 6:30 or 7 so that will put me there in utah at 8 utah time. Give or take a few min. My companion and I are doing good. We get along well so its not to bad. Hes willing to go out and work and we are seeing the blessings from it. This week/transfer we have been focusing on flooding our areas with the book of mormon and so we gave about 9 away this week, but with one of them it was a miracle. We tracted this street after we prayed to see which one we needed to and so we didn't really talk to anybody and we knock on this one house and she said oh i'm ok i'm baptist so no thanks have a good day. Were like ok... and went to the next house after we finished knocking and no one answered we started to walk down the driveway and that lady came walking over to us and said i know i said that i didn't want that book, but i changed my mind can i still get it from you. Were like for sure and gave her one and we asked if can we come back and she said yeah sometime next week. That is a first... someone changing there mind after we talked to them. Something must have been hitting her hard for her to do that. A total miracle in my eyes especially after praying to see where to go and picking this random street at the bottom of the town. Well thats about it for this week. This week should be fun and interesting also. Well have a great week, talk to y'all later!
Love ya
Elder Downs

Heres the pictures you wanted... the first 2 are of me at the ou stadium. and then the last one is me and elder tesina. one of the kids thats from viewmont that i was friends with.
elder downs

October 4, 2011-Email

2011-10-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,
How are you guys doing today? I'm doing really good. Its been a really fast week. I feel like all i have done is sat down and be in meetings. We had to leave wednesday night to stay up in pauls valley and then we drove and had to be in moore at 8:30 then we were there till about 9:30pm and then i went back to norman to spend the night. Which was super nice, surprisingly they had a queen size mattress so i got that one and slept like a baby, then the next day it was the same thing. The only exception was that we were suppose to drive back down to pauls valley after it was over, but the elders i drove up there with left there stuff there so we had to wait for the other elders to get back up there to get there stuff and we didn't end up getting back down to norman till 11:30. So they told us to just spend the night and drive down in the morning. So thats what we ended up doing we got back down here 5 seconds before conference started. We went straight to the church and as soon as we sat down it started. Then we stayed and watched conference had lunch with a member, then watched the afternoon session, had dinner with a member, then back up there for priesthood session. Then we ended up talking to the bishop for almost an hour after about some of the stuff going on in the ward and the drama down here, so by the time we got back to our apartment it was 10. I was so beat and then i went straight to bed and then we got up went to conference and then had lunch there with members and then watched the last session and then had dinner with members. It was really fun but i'm super tired of sitting down, i feel so lazy now because i had to basically sit for 4 days straight. The meetings in moore was super fun though. I learned alot and saw quite a few friends there. The funny thing is that the zone leaders totally stole my last district meeting talk i did with them down here. Basically word for word what i said. It made me laugh a little bit. I also found out something this last week too, it made me laugh also. Elder Jackson my trainer he went home like 2 or 3 months ago is already engaged and is getting married sometime this month. That was super fast, the funny thing was that he said that wouldn't happen for a long time haha. I did get the primary package, thank you for that! The camera works good, i forget i have it now, i got use to thinking that i don't have one anymore. Yeah i bought a shirt at buckle and i'm going to see if i can find another one. I also bought a sweet tie that i couldn't pass up it was 75 % off. This week should be interesting President is changing a few things, he is focusing more and getting members to go to lessons with us and only really wants us to report those numbers, the only bad thing is that we don't have any super solid investigators. We will probably only have 1 semi solid investigators after this week, so it should be interesting with his new focus. We are trying hard to find more people to teach, but we aren't getting refferals from the ward because of all the drama going on so its a lot of tracting for us. Yeah i feel better it was my own fault that i got sick so yeah i think my sinus' are a little messed up but other then that i feel good. The weather is awesome i love this time of year nice and cool makes you just want to be outside, which was hard these last 4 days. Well i'm signing off for now. I'll talk to you next week and i totally forgot my camera again so i will get that either tomorrow and send some when i go and browse mormon.org or next week.
Love y'all
Elder Downs

September 26, 2011-Email

2011-10-02T11:54:00.001-07:00

Hey whats up?
I'm doing good. Its been an interesting week to say the least. We did really good teaching this week we taught almost everybody we saw pretty much, it was awesome. We also ended up helping one of the recent converts paint the inside of there house for 2 days. They need some serious help so we jumped in an did it for them. The only bad this i think i did most of the painting my companion tried to act busy so that he wouldn't have to do as much. We ended up getting most of it painted and i got little if any paint on me, which is surprising i usually get alot on me or on the floor. We don't have any baptisms as of yet but i think that they will be coming up pretty soon. We haven't been able to meet with the investigtor that thinks i'm here to baptize her yet. The family that we set it up to teach her at had a huge tire blowout the morning of, which i think is satan trying to stop it because he knows she is really close to saying yes i want to be baptized. It's been weird i feel like hes trying to shove everything at us know, i guess something good is about to happen down here. Hes been working super hard on everybody down here trying to stop all the work. We did have a really cool experience this week. We got home from district meeting and i felt really sick and tired and i was like i really don't want to go out and my comp was like well lets just do it and see what happens so, we ended up going and we taught a bunch of people and 5 people said that we could come back. I was like wow, ok i'm glad that we did. I'm super excited for this week. We have a 2 day meeting thursday and friday. I'm going up and staying in norman. This will be my last one i think. If your on your last transfer they don't have you go since your going home soon, they take somebody else. Then its also general conference. I'm super excited about it. Well lets see thats been all the big news i guess. I forgot my memory card and haven't gotten the package yet. My companion and I are doing good. We're getting along ok. Well i'll talk to you next week!
Love ya
Elder Downs

September 19, 2011-Email

2011-09-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

Hey Whats going on...Well Its been an interesting week. We spent alot of time out of our area again, but we did do alot of good here when we were here. Transfers were on wed so we had to go all the way up to moore, and didn't get home till about 3 after we stopped for lunch somewhere. Then on Friday after district meeting we ended up helping someone move in up there at pauls valley at the last second, because they couldn't find anybody to help them. It took all day and we were so wasted that we ended up staying the night and didn't get home till then next morning. So that was an interesting night. Saturday we taught a bunch of people and it was awesome, most of them was people that said we could come back but i didn't think that they would listen when we came back. We also ended up teaching a recent converts husband, which went good... hes really stubborn but it went good. The only bad news this week was that when i went up to transfers i had my camera in my pocket and i guess it turned on and its broken. It say lens error on it now when ever i try to turn it on. So i really don't know what to do with it. There is not any electronic stores down here that i know of so i wouldn't know how to get it fixed. So i guess i'll just have to have my companion take all the pictures and i'll take them from him and put them on my hard drive. I'm glad about dad feeling better. Hopefully everything gets worked out. My comp and i are doing good. We get along alot better then my last comp did. Hes from Tremonton. Only been out 3 months but can teach pretty well, which is a bonus i'm glad about. I haven't sent my memory card yet, i need to but i keep forgetting. We went up for zone pday last week. So the whole zone got together so thats why we got to go up there. We went bowling and played some basketball after we got done with that. The weather is awesome its been in the 80's lately. The next baptisms aren't going to be for a little while but they will be coming sometime soon. We are in the ardmore ward. Well thats about it for this week. I'll talk to you guys next week.
Love y'all Elder Downs

September 12, 2011-Email

2011-09-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody How are you doing today? Well this week has been exhausting! I swear we spent more time out of our area then we did in our own area. It was awesome though a lot of good stuff happened for us and me. The first part of the week was slow and then all of a sudden thursday hit and then it was all of a sudden it was today. Thursday we went did service at the library, we shelved 100's of books i swear. After that we drove up to Ada and started the exchange up there. It was fun one of the missionaries up there really annoys me so it was ok. They live about 60 miles away and then we had District Meeting again and thats another 40 miles and we were there for a while and then drove back to Ada to do a baptismal interview, which went really good. Then we spent another night and then on Saturday we woke up early and we drove back down here to Ardmore and helped one of my favorite families move house. There pretty funny they said that they have pretty much adopted me into their family. Then i got a random call that said that Starlin, my investigator in my last area, wanted me to come back up there and baptize her. So after we helped them move we took off up for Oklahoma city for the baptism. It took about 2 1/2 hours to drive up there about 150 miles. It was probably one of the best baptism's i've ever been too which is awesome. The spirit was so strong from the time that i got there till the time i left. We got there a little early and she came a few minutes later and she came rushing in and gave me a big hug and said i can't believe your here. It was a big surprise that i was coming i guess. I had to give the baptism talk too so it was interesting i've never done that in my white clothes before so it was a different experience. Then i went to go baptize her and she came down and i was about to say the prayer and i couldn't get it out. It took me a minute to say it and when i did it was a huge rush of the spirit, its as if Christ himself was there watching it all. And all of her family that worked with her before that had passed on. It was amazing! The whole rest of the program was awesome, her whole family showed up even her family that wasn't talking to her and they even asked for a book of mormon. It was an awesome day! Then we talked for a while and she had to go because she was about to collapse and we had to go because we still had a 2 hour drive. I think we left about 7 or 7:30 and didn't get home till about 9 or a little after and then i just passed out on my bed. It was awesome but all in all i think i drove about 500 miles in the last couple of days. Then sunday was fun we didn't have anybody there sadly but i have a hunch that in the next few weeks this area will have a bunch of potential. Now your probably wondering how long i will procrastinate or hold out to tell you if i'm staying or not haha. Well i got the phone call last night and it said....... I'm staying and elder ferguson is leaving to go up to the north part of the city. Which i was excited about. The only downside is i got another interesting companion. And guess what hes only been out 3 months. Thats 5 in a row that have been under 4 months for me. I'm getting kind of tired getting tons of real green missionaries. I think though that we will have a few more baptisms in the next couple of weeks. The weather is doing awesome, i wish we would get some rain, but i'm not complaining about the 80 or 90 degree weather. I really hope this new kid is somewhat normal and i can get along with him. I really am hoping for that so i can have some fun this next 2 transfers. I have a feeling though that i will stay one more and then i am leaving somewhere else for the last one. I'm glad your getting the stuff figured out with dad! The roof and everything looked good. Well thats about all the good news for this week. I'm rushing today we have to leave at 11 to go up to norman for pday. It should be fun we are going bowling and then playing 4 square and basketball. So i'll talk to you guys next week.
Love y'all
Elder Downs
P.S. Heres a picture of me and starlin

September 6, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-09-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!
Its been quite the week. Its been super hot and the last 2 days its been in the 80's! I was so excited i sat outside for a long time yesterday just taking it all in. Its finally a break from the 60+ days of 100 degree heat. Today its about 84 so not to bad. I'm excited about the coolness and ready for the fall to come. The roof looks really good. Wish i could have been there to help out, i would have taken that over tracting all day in the heat. We also had zone conference this last week. It was a blast. Porbably one of the funniest i have been too i would say. There was alot of the people i like there. It was a long drive and we had to leave at 6:30 in the morning to get there in time but it was worth it. It gave me a break and a recharge. I'm doing good, i'm ready for transfers next week. President called me yesterday morning to see what i thought about transfers and what i thought i should do and my district down here... which never happens. I told him what i thought and that i think i need to stay at least one more down here and he said well i was thinking about taking you both out of there, i need you somewhere else, i'm like well ok but one of the investigators down here i taught a year ago and shes seems to think that i have been sent back down here to baptize her pretty much. So i have no idea i don't really care anymore i'll go were ever president wants me too. My companion is doing better. Hes more motivated, i was about to snap one day and called some other missionarys to see what to do and then after that it was an instant change. He still drives me insane but hes doing better. I feel like i have a 9 year kid with me. I have to tell him to do everything, from shower, to we have to go and give him warnings every 5 min or we will be 1/2 hour late. To telling him he has to change his clothes and wash them. I think hes only washed once since i've been down here. Clean up after him because he won't for himself. Really i feel like i have a little kid with me 24/7 and i'm pretty sure i'm not ready for that yet. I have had a test of patience this transfer and i've done really well, held my toungue, but my patience is running thin after 5 weeks. I really hope i get some really fun companions my last 2 transfers to make it enjoyable and fun. Yesterday we didn't do much just went and looked at some stores to get out of the apartment, i found some that i didn't think they had here, so it was pretty fun. Transfers are next wednesday and the next transfers after that are on oct 26th. and then after that i will be home. Save my computer just in case i left something on there i might want, i don't remember if there is but let me check in a few months. Have you been looking around for a job for me when i get home? I would like to start working soon after i get home. I found some shirts i wouldn't mind gettin, so i might grab them so i have some stuff that will fit when i get home, also a couple cool OU hats. I heard that Utah State almost won auburn that all the auburn's fans were leaving and they came back at the last minute. Thats crazy. Well i'm off to tract and see people. Talk to you guys next week.
Love all y'all
Elder Downs

Heres me and few people at zone conference.
The other is my daily battle with water bugs... HUGE COCKROACHES. i found 4 that day!
The last one is of me at the huge casino in thackerville. The windstar casino. I'm at the coliseum Haha

August 29, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-09-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

Hey how are you guys doing? Its been an interesting week. We tried to do alot of good but not alot got done. Sadly alot of people did not want to talk to us besides our recent converts or active members. We did teach a few people but not really successfully. Alot of them said don't come back. Which wasnt fun but oh well its really hard on my comp but thats something that he'll have to get use too is all the people that will say nah i'm ok i got my own church. Hes had a bad week so its been rough on both of us since he really doesn't want to go out in the heat and doesn't like it so its a fight to go out or even wake him up in the morning. I didn't think it was that hard to go out and do stuff or even wake up most mornings, yeah even once in a while its really hard but most of the time its not that bad. I almost got to go golfing down here but the guy that was going to take us cancelled last minute so thats to bad. Hes going to try and do it in 2 weeks. I hope so, if not i have to wait till next year to go and i really don't want to wait that long. This next wednesday is zone conferrence. I'm super excited to go to that and see some people. Dinner with brian was really fun. I like it when he comes down i really enjoy it. And Ernie is pretty funny guy i like him alot too. I think that this will probably be the last time i see him before i get home, unless he comes back real quick. Oh guess who i saw this last sunday... Charles Lewis. He just got back from going through the temple. It was awesome. Hes grown so much and its nuts. He taught the priesthood lesson and its really cool to see him teaching and testifying about the gospel, since last time i saw him he wasn't completely sure if it was or not and now hes dedicated to it. That made it all worth it all the doors i tracted down here and all the people that said no. Well thats about it for this week. Not much to report on next week i'll have some pictures and more stuff to talk about. Only 2 weeks left of the transfer which is crazy. Transfers are on sept. 14th. I'm almost 100 percent sure that i'm staying and ferg is leaving so i think that i'm here for the last 3 months. Well have fun with the roof. Send some pictures of it when it gets done so i can see it. Love y'all
Elder Downs

August 22, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-08-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

How are you guys doing this week? I'm doing great, its been a stressful and rewarding week. I was sick on tuesday from something i worked as much as i could but someone gave us something that made me sick. The only bad thing about being down here, is that everybody gives you deep fried stuff and its so greasy that my body cannot handle it. Thats happened twice this last week. Wednesday we tried a bunch of people for really no real reason none of them were home and we drove about 50 miles. Thursday we were up in Paul's Valley for exchanges. It was really hard, one of the elders up there is really hard to get along with he gets mad if your not following the rules exactly and then he thinks that hes above that and can do whatever he wants. So the other missionary is having problems with that and hating life and wanting this transfer to get over with. So i was up there to try and solve the problem and try and get more motivation going on and a desire to go out tracting. Haha i tried but didn't have much success. So that was an interesting 2 days. Then friday was an interesting district meeting. We talked about the importance of it and i got a little upset because no one even tries or anything so i got a little mad that they would prepare just the morning of the trainings they are suppose to have ready and amazing. So hopefully this next week will be a better one and they will put a little more effort into it. Its really upseting when you put alot of work into the meeting and then nobody pays attention or wants to be there besides to talk. Oh well i only have a few more weeks of doing this and then i don't have to worry about it again. We got back down here in ardmore late friday. Saturday was full of trying to get things ready for the baptisms on sunday. Then we went to go and try to find less actives to see if they would be interested in having hometeachers come by and none of them wanted it most of them slammed the door in our face when they realized were we were from. Sunday was a scramble i thought. Church went good and we got ropped into teaching the older youth class last second so i had to teach it. I'm pretty sure thats the hardest class to teach. Then after church we had to scramble to find baptism suites for all 3 of them. Then we finally found some and they overfilled the font so it was up on the carpet which was just funny. We had the first baptismal service which went good for the younger 2 kids. I baptized one of them and confirmed one of them. Then about half hour after that we had the other service for the other investigator getting baptized. That went good, i had to give the baptism talk in that one. I thought it went good and the rest went smoothly. The good thing is that they are over and i don't have to worry about it anymore. After that i came home and changed out of longsleeves and out of my suit and had to go for a 20 mile drive to dinner. Were we had some interesting stuff. Lasagna with goat meat, goat cheese, and to wash it down with goat milk. It was a really strange tasting lasagna. I really didn't like it or the taste of the goat meat and cheese. Well thats about it for this week. All the fun and crazy stuff that's happened. Its still over 100. More close to 110 then 100. Its been over 50+ days of this and i'm getting pretty tired of it. Even in the early morning its hot. We get out at 10 and its already 97. and its still 100 when we go in. I'll trade you guys for the weather right now straight across. Well Thats about it. I'll talk to you guys more next week. I like my room from what i see. I really don't care too much as long as theres not holes in the wall or it smells like smoke i'll be happy. Heres the pictures also of the baptisms The one of us and the two kids is Me, Terry, Zec, Elder Ferguson. I baptized and confirmed Zec. He's 17 can you believe that he looks like hes 12. The other one is Me, Tina, Bro. Matz ("adopted" Dad), Elder Ferguson. And the last one is from last transfer. It's Elder Dewitt, Me, Elder Naisbitt, Elder Chronister... Thought you would like that one haha that was when we went bowling down in downtown okc. Well I'll send more next week! Talk to you guys next week!
Love ya,
Elder Downs

August 15, 2011-Email

2011-08-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody,Well wow that's all i got to say its been a crazy week! We have been working super hard this last week and got a lot of new people to teach. We got 5 new ones which is more in one week then i think i have gotten in one week before. We also taught alot of lessons but sadly we didn't have a baptism this last week, the font broke and then the power got messed up so they moved it to this next week. Which is crazy, so we will have 3 baptisms this next Sunday. I really don't know how its going to work because they both have different programs going so it will be fun trying to figure it all out, which falls on me because our ward mission leader doesn't talk to us and the Bishop is good guy but really busy so he just says whatever you guys want. So its kind of stressful but oh well it will all work out hopefully. Oh yeah speaking of the power out at the church. We finally broke 100 degrees for 1 day. It was a pretty bad storm and i guess it knocked out the power at the church so we didn't have church yesterday, which was really weird. I was thrown off all day because of it. We also went on exchanges this last week for a day. It was a good break and really fun and then we are going up to Paul's Valley to do exchanges on Thursday till Friday night. Oh yeah so it us, 2 elders in Paul's Valley and then 2 in Ada. Everybody is at least a 45 min drive away. So we don't really see anybody else on p-day. So its just us down here. I would drive up to see somebody else but its not worth the 100 miles so we don't. Our phone number is (580) 277-1452 and we don't have anything really next Saturday so we wont plan on a dinner or anything really. Brian should hopefully remember a little bit how to get down here its pretty easy just go down I-35 from the city and go down to you hit Ardmore. Its about 2 hours from the city depending on how fast you drive. Today we are just going to relax and catch up on some sleep probably and see what happens go look at some stores to see what they have. I am getting the letters its the same address as before. I don't need anything. I'm doing great so don't worry about sending anything out with Brian. Well that's about it for this week. I'll take some pictures of the baptisms and send them next week and some other fun stuff. Talk to you guys next week
Love y'allElder Downs

August 8, 2011-Email

2011-08-09T12:10:00.001-07:00

Hey Everybody,
Well i'm back down here in ardmore. Its been an interesting couple of days. I remember most of the streets and stuff around here. Its like coming back home actually, its kind of funny. The sad thing is i know the area better then my companion which is kind of funny i think. Everybody was excited to see me so that was cool. Everybody was wondering what i did wrong to be sent back down here. Its pretty funny actually. And i've been getting fed alot down here by everybody so i guess that means that they liked me down here. The work down here is going great for right now. We had someone get baptized yesterday, he wanted me to baptize him and confirm him so i did. We also will porbably have 2 more baptisms this next week and then the week after that andother one. So its really changed down here. After all this hopefully we will get some more too. Oh guess what i found out... That Brother lewis, the one you went to the baptism last year is back in utah going through the temple and getting sealed there. I was super exctied about that! My companion is Elder Ferguson. Hes from California, he is alot like Elder Staggs, he is a little bit slower, but a really good kid. Hes tall and super skinny, i'll try and send a picture of us this next week. Well thats about all the news for this week. This next week should be fun i'll let you know about the fun stuff. Well i'll talk to y'all later
Love ya,
Elder Downs

August 2, 2011-Email

2011-08-05T11:46:00.001-07:00

Hey Everybody!
So i'm sure most of you know that i'm leaving so yeah that no big suprise. I'm going back down to Ardmore, Oklahoma. I will be going with a missionary on his 2nd transfer. I thought that i was done with getting new missionarys but i guess i was wrong. I still am in shock about going back down there, i had no idea that would be where i was going. From what i hear about him it should be an interesting transfer out there by ourselves. This last week was an interesting one. We worked really hard and we only had about 10 miles left for the whole week then on wednesday i was looking at my bike for some reason and i saw that one of my tires was worn out on the side and about ready to pretty much bust up so we had to use those 10 miles to go the store and get new tires for my bike. The guy was really nice and gave me 10% off but sadly i still had to pay 40 bucks for them. So thats a big disappointment but i had to do it, i think i've spent more on my bike this last transfer then i have my whole mission which is crazy. We bike alot this last week probably close to a 100 miles around town and back and forth. Then we found out that we were leaving on saturday but didn't know where we were heading off too. I'm excited and nervous about going down there. If they didn't like me then they for sure wont now. I don't remember the address but its the same one that i had before they live in the same house. I think that this will be my last area i don't see me getting moved really fast so this will probably be it. The pictures were awesome and i loved them. I have a few from yesterday. We ended up going down to Bricktown which is downtown okc and go bowling there, it was really fun but i didn't do to good and by the time we found it we could only bowl one game. So that was disappointing. It was really fun though. Well thats about it for this week i'll let y'all know how it goes next week when i get down to ardmore. Love you guys!
Elder Downs

August 2, 2011-Email

2011-08-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

July 26, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-07-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Hey!
So sorry i didn't e-mail yesterday, we ended up helping someone move some stuff and didn't have to much time for anything else. Its really sad they are probably my favorite family here and they are leaving to go back to pleasent grove this weekend. So we need to finish up helping them get stuff ready so we will be doing that this week. The meeting this last week was a blast. It was probably the best one i've been too. They had alot more interesting stuff then just the same old stuff they did the past few meetings. I got to see alot of people that go home this next week so that was really awesome. I learned alot this last week, but sad thing is that i took some good notes and then i left my notebook up in the choir seats by accident and someone took it, so that was really depressing. It had notes from a year ago in it, but i guess someone wanted a notebook. The only bad thing about the meetings was that we used alot of our miles to go down there and back so we only have about 20 for the rest of the month. We had to bike to church which was a fun 6 mile bike ride. Today we are planning for about a 25 mile ride total maybe more. I don't have much information about transfers. I got interviewed and all he said was that he wanted me to set goals for the rest of my mission and that he wanted me to finish strong whatever my responsibilities i may have. So i have no idea, i don't think i'm going to stay a district leader so we'll see what happens this next week. The new apartment is really good i love it. The only thing is the dishwasher is all rusty and gross. They were suppose to fix it soon but they haven't yet. That is funny about mario getting back and tyler mills. I can't believe there home already. Thats awesome about mason. Yeah for sure i'll be there when he gets back. I bet hes super excited to go hopefully the mtc will treat him good. I think i'll hold off on the pants till i move somewhere. Then i'll send them off. I'll send home my memory card this week. I'm doing good don't need anything. The shutters look really good dad and jake did a good job. Well i have to go we have a ton of biking to do and not much time to do it. So I'll talk to you next week with the big news if i'm staying or going.
Love y'all
Elder Downs
P.S. heres some pictures. The big group one is the picture of our zone the ones that went to the meeting. The other one is Elder duke and Elder chronister and me

July 20, 2011-Email

2011-07-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

Hey how are you guys doing? So the big news we did move. We moved out on friday to an apartment just a building down. We are still on the bottom floor, which is really nice i don't like being on the top floor at all you have to be to careful so this was a good move. Everything is 100 times better and it doesn't smell as bad anymore. So that is what we were doing most of this last week was getting ready for that. We took all day thursday to pack and to get cleaned up. Let me say that i really don't like missionarys. They don't clean up after themselves at all when we were cleaning out the kitchen we found tons of pans that had never gotten washed and mounds and mounds of Tupperware. The worst i think was when we were cleaning out behind the fridge. We found bread and pieces of pizza that have been there for who knows how long. It could have been 12 years they lived there for that long. Then on friday we moved it all in about an hour and then i went on exchanges with the zone leaders to Yukon. It was a blast. We got some corn on the cob from a member and some watermelon so we cooked it up and ate it. I like Yukon alot its a medium size town but really fun and lots of people willing to talk to us. Then we came back and put the rest of our apartment back together. Earlier this week we taught a few people which was really cool. One of them was from china. I guess she is either living with a member or is married to him but he asked us to come over and teach her so we did. It was interesting teaching someone who didn't know anything about Christ or about the Bible, except for what she read on the computer. I think that was one of the hardest lessons i have ever taught and she didn't speak or understand english very well so that made it harder. They are going back this next week while i am at the meeting so hopefully that will go well. That is really cool about mason! I wish i could be there for his farewell but i will when he gets home. Yeah be sure to get his address and his mission home address so i can write to him. Oh i almost forgot my new address is 8110 NW Britton Road Apartment #3 Oklahoma City, OK 73132. I'm super excited for this next week. Its kind of a big recharge on my batteries when i go to these meetings. So it will be nice to relax and learn and then come home and apply them. I got busy this last week but i will try and send my stuff this weekend when i get back. I'll get everything together and send it off. Well i'll talk to you guys next week were late today again. Well Love you guys talk to you later!
Love Elder Downs

July 11, 2011-Email

2011-07-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

Hey how are you doing this week?
Its been a fun week lots of fun stuff happened. Thats crazy about mason! I super excited for him sad thing is he leaves and i get home, but oh well. We aren't sure if we are moving or not yet we haven't heard, i guess we will have to do most of the work and find out the details, the guy that was over it just up and left so its interesting but it will all work out in the end. Next week is our 4 day meeting, and surprisingly i don't have to teach anything, which i thought is really weird. I only have to demonstrate one of the lessons in front of everybody which is a piece of cake so thats no worries at all. Thats really cool about ky and jedd's lawn. You guys need to send a picture of it. Did i tell you that one of the elders thats in my district thinks that he framed her house? Funny huh. He doesn't live to far from her which is crazy. I still haven't gotten anything in the mail or anything like that so i don't know if they got lost or what. i will text you my address when i figure out where its going to be. My bike is working good, the sad story about all of it is that yesterday at dinner we were at one of our favorite families and we told them how much it was and that i wasn't happy. It turns out that he is a bike mechanic and would have done it for free! Which is good to know if anything else happens to it but i wish i would have known that a week ago. The fun this this week was that after district meeting we went on exchanges with the other elders in our district and then we ended up going to a 7 or 8 stake youth conference celebration i guess you would call it. They had a big preformance in norman at the OU's basketball arena. That was really cool There was a ton of members there and a ton of missionarys. I got to see alot that i haven't seen in a few months. And the thatchers were there too. That was really cool to see them again, i didn't know if i would or not. I took a little bit of pictures but you really couldn't see much from where we were sitting on my camera. It was fun and it was cool to go back through norman, i haven't been there in about a year. I will send my pants and stuff definetly this week and of course i'm doing good. I'm drinking alot of water so don't worry about that. My service shoes are getting worn out so when i get home i'm going to need to get some new ones but i'm doing good. The 4 day meeting will be a good for both of us to visit with the other eldes. I can't believe this transfer is almost over already. We basically only have 2 full weeks left if you don't count the ltm week. Well i'm off to play some basketball, were late today we ended up teaching somebody this morning and so we are way behind on everything.
Love you guys
Elder Downs

July 5, 2011-Email

2011-07-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

Hey Whats up?
So how was your week? Mine was good. This has been an interesting week let me tell you. Its been full of interesting stuff. Lets start off with yesterday. It was fun we ended up playing basketball and then playing kickball after that for a while. Then somebody dropped off some grilled hamburgers and hot dogs so we ate them and then just relaxed because we couldn't really do anything and then we went to get some ice cream. Then we went in and headed to bed. I guess we could go watch fireworks but we didn't know until this morning so that was kind of depressing because we both wanted to but didn't think that we could. But all in all it was ok i did miss the big show so hopefully we can do that this next year. Oh when we were at dinner with a member on tuesday we think somebody at the restraunt slipped us a laxative. I wont go into details but it was not fun at all. Then on friday after district meeting i went to go and get my bike fixed. A couple of weeks before we went to taco bell and biked there and somebody messed my my brakes pretty bad. They bent my disc pretty bad so everytime i would bike i would fight against myself so i finally said i'll just fix it. So i take it in and say will you fix that and look at my chain and oil it up a little bit. So i guess what they heard was a basic tune up i'm like ok that can't be to bad so i said ok that fine i guess. So we dropped it off and came back and he was like ok i fixed the brakes checked the tire pressure and messed with the gears and yeah it should be fine to go. The only downfall is i asked how much and he said 50 bucks. I was like wow, but you can't really do anything about it so i ended up paying for it. So that was really depressing and i haven't ridden it yet but it better ride like a dream for that much money. Thats about all the stuff thats happened this week. Were working hard trying to find new people we found a couple this last week so hopefully they turn out to progress. I haven't gotten anything yet in the mail. The next transfers is on august 3rd so we have a while still. We will hopefully be moving apartments on the 14th or sometime close to there. Which i'm really excited about i'm kind of tired of ours. Hope y'all had a good weekend and are staying cool. Its hot here about 103 or 104. But were surviving. Well i have to go, talk to you guys next week
Love y'all
Elder Downs

June 27, 2011-Email

2011-07-05T11:17:00.001-07:00

Hey how are you guys doing this week?
I'm doing good this week. It was kind of a rough week for us it seams like everybody around us kind of abandoned us. All of our investigators never called us back, all of our recent converts, or most of our dinners. It was a way out of wack week. We tried to do our best but we didn't end up doing much and pretty much everybody rejected us at the door. So it was a big trial of our faith but at the very end we finally taught somebody on the door step the last house we knocked on this week. He was really nice and accepted a book of mormon and said we could come back. So hopefully this will go well with him. Our baptismal candidates are doing good They had a busy week i guess but both of them are still on track to be baptized sometime, were not sure when quite yet they still both need to come to church a few times and then we well see after that. But my guess is it will be the end of july when they both will be. I did get the memory card and it was awesome. i will Send the package this week with everything in it.. if i remember. We are low on miles and i don't want to bike with it so it might be the end of the week or the next monday. I haven't gotten anything else yet. It looks like yellowstone was fun and you guys had a good time. Loved the pictures. We did more service this week too. On saturday we went with a good chunk of the stake to help in the city north of us. We ended up going with most of the missionarys to a huge field were this guy needed help cleaning it up so he can put his cows back out there. So they took a ton of trailers and we picked it up and threw it on the trailer and dumped it by the gate. It was crazy though we found engine blocks in the middle of the field not to mention tons of random pieces of everything you could think of. Some of the sticks were thrown so hard that they went in the ground about 2 feet and we had to pull them out not to mention random pieces of fence post in the ground. It was super fun by i got way dirty and was dead tired by the time we got back. I pretty much collapsed when we got home and took a nap during lunch to recover then we were out biking around trying to talk to people. Oh the weather is super hot its been in the 100's everyday this week and theres not much chance that it will change. Lets see thats about it for this week nothing crazy happend besides that. Oh we got a new bishop that was pretty crazy i wasn't expecting that haha. Well i'll talk to you guys next week!
Love ya guys
Elder Downs

June 20,2011-Email

2011-06-22T17:40:00.001-07:00

Hey Everybody!
So the big news this week is that i'm staying here with Elder DeWitt for another 6 weeks. Which i'm excited about for the most part except for our apartment. It smells really bad since its basically rotting and it seems like nothing is happening with it. The manager keeps talking to us telling us that she needs the apartment guy to send her a letter that we can move apartments. And we've called him a couple of times and still nothing has happened. So hopefully we can get out. We went apartment shopping pretty much this last week and found a couple but i doubt that they will move us out of them. So we'll see what happens the next couple of weeks. This week has been interesting. It seems like we were gone from our area more then we were in our area. And when we were in other peoples areas we would find people and teach tons of lessons but when we were here that didn't happen. Which has been kind of frustrating, but we finally got a new investigator after 3 weeks of trying to find new ones. But oh well we will in due time i guess. Our 2 investigators right now are doing awesome. They both are getting ready for baptism, which will be shortly for the both of them. It will hopefully be the start of next month. Its crazy its almost july already. The heat has been really bad. We haven't been biking because its been super windy, but we have been out tracting alot in it and its been exhausting. I basically sweat from the time i get out of the car till the nights over. Its nuts! I can't believe that your bascially 50 degrees cooler then us. I would kill for that right now. And i have a feeling that its only going to get worse as the summer goes on. But oh well its my last one. I have bought pants and i haven't sent my slacks yet. I will this week or next week when i remember. It was fun to have the temple conference i got to see a ton of people before they go home. 12 are leaving this transfer and another 12 the transfer after that. I did take some pictures of things around and you'll have to see it on my memory card. Well lets see thats about all the big news for this week. Nothing is really going to big and we were gone for most of it haha. Have Fun in yellowstone with out me i will be sweating it out here. Well i have to go for now. I'll talk to you guys latter.
Love ya
Elder Downs

June 16, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-06-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody...
This has been an interesting week. Really stressful and frustrating. Everything was going good till tuesday night we got back and i stepped over by my desk and it was soaked! The floor had about an inch of water on it. So everything around my desk got soaked and we didn't know what to do so we waited till the morning and then called the office and told them about it and then they came and cleaned it up a little bit. Not much they left the carpet and just took the padding out. Left the base boards and drywall and stuff. It was kind of ridiulous. We figured out what happended though they foundation has a leak in it so when they water the new sod by the side of our apartment all day it leaked in and soaked it. So thats all they did and then that night it flooded a little bit again because someone turned the sprinkler on again. But we caught it before it got to bad. Then 2 days after that it rained during the night and it flooded again! We've spent more time in the apartment trying to fight off the sharks and fish then we did outside it this week. I'm really getting mad and decided that i have had enough of it and want to move out of the entire apartment complex. So we spent saturday looking for new apartments. The guy thats in charge of our apartments came and looked at it and said you need a new one and i'm like thats for sure right. But since hes a little not there and kind of crazy nothing will get done unless we do it and he leaves this week and we get a new office missionary so its just a huge mess. I think that i would like to just leave this area and not have to worry about it. So thats what we have been dealing with this week. I thought about building a canoe and just floating down the great amazon in our apartment but i didn't have enough wood. But hopefully we can get everything worked out soon this week and get out of that apartment so that we don't drown at some point. On the good news side we have temple conference on wednesday so that will be really fun. I should be able to get to see a few people before they go home. 24 missionarys in the the next 2 months go home! How crazy is that? I have no idea whats going to happen with me this time. Transfers aren't till a week from wednesday so i will next e-mail whats going to happen with me. Well i have to get going we are probably going to go the zoo in a little bit so we have to get going. I'll send some pictures next week of it heres some pictures of our apartment and how wet it was the first time it flooded. The next 2 are of my district and Elder Palmer, Elder McGill and Me.
Love you guys Elder Downs

June 9, 2011-Email

2011-06-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Hey Whats going on?
So sorry i didn't email yesterday. We had to go help somebody in a jam randomly so we didn't have enough time to go an e-mail so we are doing that today. We ended up helping somebody who was moving from dallas to utah. Their uhaul truck caught on fire so they needed help sorting through some of the stuff and then they ended up just putting it all back on the truck and driving to utah. I guess the uhaul company wouldn't bring them another truck so they were just like ok were going all the way there. So i got super dirty with all the ash and stuff and then we came home and changed and by the time we did that we had only about an hour left so we just went and played ball. Then we helped someone after dinner to finish putting in a lamanet wood floor in their t.v. room and hallway. It was really fun and actually quiet funny. The guy we were helping out is not mechanically inclinded so he really didn't know what he was doing. I was surpirsed that he didn't hurt himself with some of the stuff that he did. Dewitt and i had to just hold back and be like wow. I am so glad that i know how to do stuff like that! Thanks Dad! But all in all the floor looked good and i don't know how but it must have been extreme luck. This week was kind of rough we really didn't have good numbers to report but we did get a lot done which was suprising. We got both of our baptismal canadites to church which is awesome. One of them we hadn't talked to in 3 weeks pretty much, but he randomly came to church. So we were excited about it. Almost everybody we invited to church came which never happens so its awesome! I haven't bought pants yet i haven't had time but i will this week or next week. I didn't go to chickasha, we didn't ask for permission so we stayed here and did the floor. The weather is super hot. ITs been in the 100's the last 2 days. And transfers are 2 weeeks from wednesday. They are coming fast! Sorry i don't have any pictures this week but i will have some next week. Well i have to go so i'll talk to y'all next week!
Love ya!
Elder Downs

June 1, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-06-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

Hey Whats Up,
Wow what a crazy week it has been. So obviously i'm still here and kickin it in oklahoma. Lets see i'll start with what happened on tuesday. So we go to the meeting and think its going to be a normal day like any other one. It was dark and cloudy but thats about it. So we were there and nothing happened really till about 5. Then everybody there started to kind of go crazy saying that there is tornado warnings all up and down our mission and that everybody needs to go and find a shelter everywhere. So our meeting kept on going on and i couldn't get ahold of a campanionship for 30 min so that was nerve racking and then we finally did and figured out that they were in a shelter and everything was ok then right in the middle of a big discussion i guess the sirens went off so we all pilled into a bathroom and waited there for a little while then got out and then were rushed in really fast when President saw a truck go up on 2 wheels. Then after that it wasn't bad at all lots of rain and hail but thats all that happened to us when i was there. The funny thing is that during all of this they had ordered a ton of pizzas from mazzios pizza and they still delivered it all so after that we all ate it in the hall in case something else happened. It was pretty crazy. After that they decided to just call the meeting off and go back and try and help with best that we can. Our area right here didn't get any damage really it was just really windy. But about 15 miles away got hit really bad. So it was a blessing, someone must have been watching out for us. All the missionarys are safe and nothing happened to any of them. Wednesday we were expecting to go and help clean up but that didn't happen so we tried and did service around in our area. Then on Thursday for a good chunk of the day we went up to peidmont which is only about 15 miles away from us and helped clean up some of the stuff. We got tons of pictures of it. It was crazy to see some of the damage. There was places where there was nothing left but a concrete slab and right next to it was a whole house with little damage. We helped with what we could going through everything looking for stuff to save and moving some walls and stuff out of the way. It was really a humbling experience thinking about that and how they lost almost everything. We helped with one particular case in where we just were asking if somebody needed help and they ended up being a member that we didn't even know about. Its crazy how the lord can still do his work even with a big disaster there. He said that he thinks that this is a sign that he should start coming back. And good news is that I was the only one out of everybody in our group to not step on a nail. I thought that was pretty good. Bad news is that my last area got hit really bad. Blanchard got pretty much demolised and then chickasha got hit too. Right next to a members where we were all the time. We are thinking about going with our ward down there on saturday to help clean up, if we can get permission to do it. Thats pretty much what we did this last week is help with all of that and then tried to talk to people but they were kind of distracted especially with it being memorial day weekend. So hopefully this week will be a good week and we will be able to find more people to teach. I'm doing good, tired but good. I'm really tan now and got massive tan lines, but didn't get any sunburns which is good. I guess when i was getting out of the car or something my jeans got caught on something and ripped on the back pocket. I'm not having to much luck with jeans anymore. So i have to buy some more sometime i'm hoping to push it back for a while but i might have to if we go down to blanchard so i figured i'd wait on sending home the pants. My companion and i are doing good, we get along 95 % of the time but he sometimes tries to push buttons since hes bored or to make him laugh so thats getting a little bit annoying but oh well. The transfer is almost half way over with and i can't believe it. I like the pictures it was good to see everybody. And it sounds like y'all had a way busy weekend. Hopefully it will settle down and everything will get back to normal. I'm doing good can't complain about anything so yeah. Well i think thats it for this week. I'll talk more next week about how the work is going we didn't get much done this last week i don't think many missionarys did.
The picture of the kitchen is where we were helping. The picture of the car in the rumble is right across the street. The car is in the middle of the slab of concrete. And thats about all thats left is that.Well talk to you next week!
Love y'all
Elder Downs

And mom here you go heres some more pictures of me so that you can show everybody.
The first one is Elder Naisbitt and Elder Cronister and me, you can't really see him though. Naisbitt is from hooper and thinks that he framed kylies house.
The next one is after a district meeting its everybody in our zone pretty much.
The last one is last pday playing ball. You can barley see me but it was a blast.
I'll try and take more for everybody i haven't been doing good at that.
Love ya

May 24, 2011-Email

2011-05-31T17:16:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!
How are you guys doing this week? It sounds like its been quite a week for everybody, i guess a weekend. Mine has been a long week too. Our car has been in the shop and still is today... so we have been biking everywhere. Its been interesting we've probably bike pretty close to 70 miles this last week in the wind. I usually don't mind biking but with the wind its been really hard. We have been trying to get to talk to alot of people but that hasn't really worked out to well. We hopefully will reap the benifits of all our hard work this next week. We really couldn't set any return appointments so hopefully we can just stop by and they will be there. Tomorrow is a 2 day meeting. They made it a 2 day one instead of a 4 day one. So we are going to be there pretty much all day. Which i'm pretty excited about since i get to see lots of people, and i also get to stay at my apartment which is nice and kind of sad. It was nice to be able to stay somewhere else and not worry about my area for a day or two but i'll be sleeping on my bed instead of the floor so thats a big bonus. And this time i don't have to teach anything which is nice i can just sit and listen. Church went alot better this week but its been kind of annoying. Nobody tells us anything so we were expecting to have meetings at 11 but i guess they didn't have them so we were freaking out trying to find a ride to get there and then finally somebody answered their phone after we called about 20 people and said oh i don't think we have them today. So that was kind of annoying its like we are not even here trying to help everybody out but they aren't letting us help. The weather has been pretty good so nothing to complain about except the wind. So if that would die down it would be awesome. So hopefully this week will be awesome. Thats crazy to hear about jedd. Especially right after everything that happened with grandma. Hopefully everything will get back to the way it was really fast and he can be his normal self. Well i'll let you know more about this next week, next week. Today we are off to play some dodgeball or basketball so it will be fun. Hope everybodys week will be more calm and easy going. Love y'all talk to you guys latter!
Love
Elder Downs

May 16, 2011-Email

2011-05-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Whats going on?
I'm doing really good. This week has been really fun actually. Elder guinto is gone and Elder Dewitt is here. We get along great. We have been working really hard and its been fun. We talked to alot of people this week and got 2 new investigators. One of them is really solid and we set a baptismal date with him for in june so he will be getting baptized soon. Hes pretty funny. We have started running again and we are biking everywhere so its been hard on my legs. They are actually dead tired believe it or not but it will be good in case i go to a bike area after this. They have also strongly encouraged us to bike as much as possible. Today we are going to play some basketball with all the elders. It should be really fun they all are really good so it should be a blast. Oh yeah elder dewitt is from arizona in the north east part. He just came from my first area and he also served in chickasha so its funny talking with him about the people i use to teach and he use to teach. Not much else is going on all we do is tract basically and not many people are listening but we will find some more that are willing to i'm sure. No i haven't sent my pants yet i will this week or next week. Yeah i got the money but you didn't need to send me any more. So awkward story we had to go into relief society and say a few words about how they could be better member missionarys. So they were packed in there at least 30 of them probably more. I think that will be my first and last time every going in there. Oh and not to mention that we had to use a microphone since one of the sisters couldn't hear and one of the one sisters kept telling us that we weren't doing it right. Oh it was fun. 2 weeks in a row of fun stuff hopefully next week wont be bad. I'll take some pictures for y'all and send them when you get my memory card sent to me. Thats about it i'll send more next week when some more stuff happens. All that happened this week is a huge rain storm that almost flooded our apartement but then it dried up in about 30 min so thats about it. Well tell everybody i say hi and tell dad i say hi!
Love y'all
Elder Downs

May 9, 2011-Email

2011-05-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!
Whats going on? Happy Mothers Day! So Not much new has been going on. We have been tracting alot lately trying to find more people to teach but we haven't found anybody really to teach. But we do have some really cool refferals that we just got so hopefully that will work out. Oh so in case you didn't hear i'm staying here another transfer and getting an Elder named Elder DeWitt. I heard hes pretty cool so that will be fun. I'm ready for a change my companion now is driving me insane so hopefully that it will be better. We just found out that our car needs a whole new bumper. So just by pulling out the screws its going to cost alot of money. If it was just me i would just put my own new screws in and it would be fine but oh well i really can't do that. They are almost done with our road which is nice so hopefully we wont have any more problems. Today we are going to play some basketball with everybody so that will be fun! I'll take some pictures of everybody so you can see and then you can send my memory card and we'll switch again. Well Theres not much more to say since i called home yesterday but i'll write more next week and have lots more to say about my new comp and how things are going here. Wish me luck! Love y'all
Tell dad i say hi!
Elder Downs

May 5, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-05-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!
Its been quite a hectic week here. Super busy with stuff and its been really pretty stressfull actually. We had our 2 baptisms on saturday and they went really good. The first one was really awesome and then the one after that was pretty good to but not as many people came which was kind of depressing. I'm sending the pictures of us at the baptism. The girl is Janalisa Kolsut, and the guy was Mike Moore. Janalisa got baptized by her brother which was really cool and a way spiritual moment for them. Mike got baptized by elder guinto and i did the confirmation yesterday. We also had zone conference this last week. It was pretty fun i got to see a bunch of people before they leave for home next week. It was a good meeting to and i had to give a 15 min training which of course i didn't find out that i was doing that till 2 or 3 days before but it went good. So thats been our week. We really have only had about 3 days to do missionary work. Wednesday i was sick with something then friday we had zone conference all day and saturday we had a baptism at 1 and at 6 and we had to fill the font and clean up after both of them so that took the whole day. This week will be a fun one lots of tracting. We basically baptized everybody that we were teaching so now we need to go and find some more people to teach. We hopefully have a baptism on the 28th if everything goes according to plan. Good news though. A member is taking us golfing in about half and hour! I'm super excited about it. It will be fun because guinto has never been before so it will be pretty funny. Mothers day i was planning on calling after we get home from church. Our church gets out 3:30 here so 2:30 there. So i will call probably around 5 or 6 your time 6 or 7 my time. Depends on what we do for dinner. Somebody signed up for it so i don't know when that will be but i will be after that so watch around 5 or 6 or 7. I will find out about transfers that night. Around 9 or so. if you send me kylies number i will text her if i'm staying or going, then she can call and let everybody know. I'm thinking that i might be leaving so we'll see what happens. Well i have to go we are late today and there was a huge wait for the computers so we have to go, so that i can go golfing :)
Love ya Talk to you next week!
Elder Downs
P.S. tell dad i say hi and hope hes doing ok and not getting lost in D.C.

April 27, 2011-Email

2011-04-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody Happy Easter,
Wow it sounds like its been an interesting weekend for everybody. I hope everybody is doing well and getting through it. My week has been good, everything here is going good. We were able to meet with everybody this week and we are on schedule to have 2 baptisms this next saturday and then next month have another one. It was an interesting lesson with one of our investigators we told her that one of us might be leaving in 2 weeks and she was not excited about that. She broke down in tears and started saying what can i do so that you will stay here... and then said" i will be praying everyday that you both will stay at least till my baptism". So that was really kind of an awkward lesson, but it turned out good and shes so excited to be baptized its unbelievable. So this is going to be an extremely busy week for us coming up. Trying to get everything ready for saturday and then we have zone conference this friday. I'm excited about that but it wont be a multi zone conference i don't think so it will pretty much just be the elders that i see every week there. Easter was good. We didn't have any early meetings so we kind of had a lazy morning with extra studies since it was pouring rain. Its the first actual rain that i think we've gotten since last october. So it was awesome and it is kind of sprinkling still. Church was good kind of awkward though, elder guinto offended a member pretty bad so when she said hi it was quite awkward. Then we went home real quick and changed out of a suit then had an easter dinner with a cool family. They were pretty funny and it was a pretty good dinner. Some ham and carrots and rolls. Then some carrot cake for dessert. Which i'm sure dad is jealous of. It wasn't to bad. Then we went and tried some people and then talked to a less active member for about an hour outside her house. Which was really good hopefully we can come and start teaching her the lessons and get her active again and baptize her husband. Other then that, thats about all thats been going on. Bowling last week was really fun i bowled a 144 which is like a personal best. This week we are just going to be playing basketball or something like that. Hopefully it will be fun. I think i might have found a place to get some pants so i'll be looking to see if i can get some. I got the money thanks so much and you didn't need to send that much. Yeah thy split out district about 2 weeks ago so its just Elder guito and i and then 2 other elders in our district. It was really cool to see kase. Looks like hes a happy baby. I bet there all excited to see him. I can't wait when i get home. You'll have to give him a kiss for me. You'll have to take a bunch of pictures for me and send them so i can see them. Hope everything works out with grandma. Please keep me updated on what happens. I'll be praying for her. Well tell everybody i say hi and that i love them!
Love y'all, talk to you next week!
Elder Downs

April 20, 2011-Email

2011-04-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!
How are y'all doing? I'm doing just dandy. Not much has happened this week! It actually was kind of boring but we did set a new baptismal date with one of out investigators. It was actually really cool experience. She said that she had not felt the spirit so strong before in any other church or time in her life. Then she said that she felt a hug from god or something. Then she was so excited to actually get a baptismal date. She was like "me of all people really me". Her date is now on may 28th. Other then that not much has happened everything is set for our next week baptisms. One of them is an investigator and the other a excommunicated member. They all are pretty set so i'm pretty excited. I'm doing great the tornados weren't even close to me they weren't even in our mission about 30 miles east of the mission. So don't worry about me. We did have a day when we had crazy wind. It blew about 50-60 mph all day long. It was a really long day but luckily we didn't have to tract so that was a bonus. Next week is zone conference i'm pretty excited about it and then only a week till mothers day! That will be fun last phone call home. That would be really cool if i got to see Brian again. That was really a blast. Yeah my companion has chilled out a lot since the first i met him. I probably will ruin him by the time i leave haha. Were doing better he still bugs me but its not as bad. And i figured that its only 6 weeks so thats not to bad. I think that one of us will be moving so it should be interesting to see who and were. Today is going to be fun were going bowling somewhere with everybody. So i'll take a bunch of pictures and show you next week. It was either bowling or driving range and everybody but me and another elder said bowling so i guess its not golfing but it will do. I haven't been eating much candy or anything like that but if you want to send it i guess i'll have to eat it. But i'll share most of it. Oh yeah i got a e-mail from elder lewis... hes home at byu but he wants me to go sell security systems when i get home with him in a random state, during the sumer and spring. Hes going to alabama in a week or two then to tennesse. I said that i would think about it. Love y'all!
Elder Downs

April 12, 2011-Email

2011-04-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody! How are you doing today? So its been an interesting week... actually its been a really bad week. Except for being able to see Brian for a little while. Other then that every single appointment that we had fell through except for 2. So we had a really rough week. We did find a new investigator this last week thats pretty solid but the only thing is she is very sick all the time. So thats really the only downfall she has alot of ups and downs so us meeting with her kind of varies. She said that she wants to be baptized so that will be interesting within the next couple of weeks. We do have a baptism coming up on the 29th now so hopefully that will go through he has some word of wisdom problems but hes pretty committed so that should help out alot. Oh before i forget the place that we get food really cheap is ALIDI's i think thats how you spell it. Something to that kind of effect. But its just knockoff brands but they are really cheap and taste the same as the normal stuff so thats been a blessing since i have to pay for laundry. I was hoping to avoid that my entire mission but i guess not. The district is spliting this week so everybody that i have in my district wont be in my district anymore. It will be us and 2 other elders in our district and i just found out that we might be losing the car soon. Which i don't like becasue that would mean lots of biking in the wind which i'm not looking forward too. Its been really windy here the last 2 weeks. My companion and i are getting along ok. Were 2 different personalities kind of put together. So its been a long week i feel like i know the area better then he does and hes been here for 2 months. And hes starting to get on my nerves with alot of things so thats not good but i can handle 6 weeks i'm just hoping that its not longer then that. If it is then i might have some problems. It was really good to see Brian on saturday. And Ernie was really funny i guess he moved really close to their house so thats pretty funny. Yeah i need some new slacks i will look around and see if i can find a suit store or something... i'll see what i can work out. There isn't a mall thats close in our area its about 15 miles away so its a stretch going there especially on pday my companion wouldn't like that at all so i'll look around here. The trophey is pretty sweet, but don't worry jerilyn because i will win it next year and take it off your hands. Yeah we live right next to the leasing office and the pool, which is going to be so hard when the heat of the summer is here. (Jacob brought up Tayor's house on his i-pod) Did he see the road work outside on the road. Well thats been a pain because we can't go in the normal entrance we have to go to another one and go all the way around and back to get to our apartment, kind of a pain i'm hoping they finish it soon, but from what i hear they have been working on that for 2 years so i guess my wish won't come true. I loved the videos of you guys on Brian's phone that was pretty funny. He tried to do one of me but he couldn't send one. (I told Taylor I am making a list of all available girls for hima s soon as he gets home)This list you have is pretty funny... whos on it out of curiousity? Well i have to go i only have an hour to do this now so thats alot to do in an hour i'll talk to you guys later! Have a good week, Pray that ours will be better! Love ya guys Elder Downs

April 4,2011-Email

2011-04-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody! Well its been an interesting week. I'm now up here in the north part of oklahoma city. We live off of council and northwest expressway. The funny thing is the day before transfers me and elder jacobs went to the temple with a member here and we stopped for lunch across the street from where we are living now. I thought that was quite funny. The temple was a blast we did 2 sessions... the only thing was i was super tired after all that. I said goodbye to as many as i could but i missed some people which was really sad. They made me promise that i would come back to visit so looks like i'll be making a trip back through here sometime. Transfers was really fun i got to say goodbye to some people... Which is crazy to think that Elder Riches is home now. I got up here and met my new companion whos name is Elder Guinto. I met him last LTM so that was kind of on purpose i think. Hes from Elpaso Texas by the border. Hes a interesting guy really serious so its been an interesting week. Its been funny i can't always be serious so its been funny. Yeah we have a huge district theres 10 of us and then a spanish district with 6 so theres a lot of missionaries around here. We are going to get together and play basketball today for p-day so i'm pretty excited about that. I guess in 2 weeks or so they are spliting the district though and i will be with 2 other sets and then the other one will have 3 sets so thats going to be fun... im still really confused about it and how everythings going to work out but i'll just let it happen and see after. Conference was awesome we all were at the stake center watching it. I really liked all the talks but i felt like i really needed to get married really fast... SCARY!!!!!!!!!! i think 3 people hit on that and then President Monson hit it really hard in the Priesthood session. I love the area up here, i'm so glad to be back up in a city. A lot more people are willing to listen. Our first 2 days of tracting we taught 5 lessons off of tracting! Yeah i think we taught one in the last 2 weeks in chickasha. So the people are really more accepting up here so i'm really happy about that. Ok so to answer the loads of questions... Yeah the suit fits still and is all good. I'm in a car for as of right now but it might get taken away when they split the districts or next transfer so thats not good right for the summer like last year! Our ward is the OKC 3rd Ward and we actually meet in the building across from the temple. Were in a middle class to rich part so its way different from chickahsa and blanchard haha. I forgot my other planner that has our address on it so i will send a letter today with it on it. So be watching for it. Yeah i can't believe i'll be calling again it seams like it was just yesterday that i did and this will be the last one too! Man i was so close to winning the ncaa touney, i thought that utah state would loose but i had to choose them! But UCONN ALL THE WAY! I didn't know that you gave out a trophey, you'll have to send me a picture of it to me. Oh so guess what i see all over the place now? Dodge Journeys they are everywhere. Oh an our phone number is (405) 924-7729 so yeah if brian can come that would be awesome. I'll be watching for a call We live basically The north west part of the city basically 90th street or something i know its northwest expressway. Congrats about the new computer! Just in time for me to use it when i get home! YAH! Lets see I'll send some pictures next week with the e-mail i forgot my camera too i'm behind today. Oh the only bad side of being up here is we have no washer or dryer and the apartment is small and pretty crapy! So i had to pay for laundry and stuff, but we found a really cheep place to buy groceries so it kind of works out in the end. Well we have to go i only have so long on the computer anymore and its shorter then the last one so i'll talk to you guys later! Have a good week... Love Y'all GO UCONN! ELDER DOWNS

March 28, 2011-Email & Pic

2011-03-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

Well its Monday again... and i have the big news if i'm going or staying. I'm not sure if i'm to excited about some things but i'm excited to get out of chickasha, its been fun but i think its a good thing to get out. So i'm going back up to the city. In the OKC 3rd ward. So my area will cover the temple. Which should be really cool, but the only downfall about the whole thing is that i have like a 10 or 12 man district. Thats going to be an interesting change from a 4 man. My new companion has only been out 6 weeks. I was hoping to get somebody that had been out for at least 6 months but i'm stuck with all these greenies. So it will be an interesting transfer. Our week has been super hectic. Between this baptism and transfers happening its been really crazy. The baptism happened and it was really awesome but we ran into some snags with his suit. There wasn't one big enough for him so i called our mission leader to tell him and he said he would find one so i was like ok and the only bad thing was he showed up 5 min before it started so that was interesting but he got baptized, confirmned and is getting the priesthood next week! I was so excited when it finally happened. But thats the good news this week. We also did get a mower fixed up and running for one of our investigators here in chickasha then we mowed her lawn too. That was pretty fun. Thats cool that brian is coming out again. I have no idea where my address will be or phone number... i just know its up by the temple i basically stayed in my area during the ltm. My companion is a little nervous about getting somebody else so hopefully they do good together. Yeah i sent out my pics this last week sometime. I picked Uconn to go all the way so thats awesome that there still in it! I didn't pick any of the other final fours though. I've been taking pictures of Blanchard and Chickasha so you can see what it looks like. Its going to be a busy few days saying goodbye to people and were going to the temple tomorrow with a member so lots of stuff to do and still have to pack! Well i'll let you know when i get there my new address and stuff so i'll talk to you guys later! Have a great week! Love y'all! Elder Downs

March 22, 2011-Email

2011-03-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!
Hey whats going on? This has been a weird week. We had a weird experience with brandon. I don't know if he was just in a really bad mood or what but he was mad at us for some reason and didn't really want to do anything. So that was an interesting situation to deal with. Hopefully everything this next week will go good with him. So be praying for him. Other then that not much got done when we got back here. We tried a bunch of people but no one was home. But there is good news we should be having a baptism this next saturday. Well if we can get a hold of him this next week we just need to set up an interview for him. I've been teaching him since i got here and he finally said last week that he wanted to be baptized this next week! Which is awesome so hopefully that will happen before i leave. So President talked to me and asked if elder jacobs could handle not having me around and i said yeah and he said ok i think its about time for you to move. So its sounding like i'm leaving in a week and a half. I'll let you know next week for sure though. The meeting was really fun this last week. The only bad thing was i had to stay with 2 elders that i had never met before so that was interesting. And to add to it all i had to sleep on the floor for 3 nights. Sadly the floor was more comfy then the couch was. We did go play basketball in the morning which was fun. We fit 9 of us in one car and went to play at the church. I did get to see alot of people that i hadn't seen in a while which was really cool. I have been taking more pictures so you will be excited. I'll send home my memory card when i get my next one. I have the brackets too that i have to send. My companion didn't want to do it so yeah it will just be mine. I really haven't heard anything about it. After i filled it out i heard that utah state lost! That was a bummer since i had them winning at least one game. But i will send that off today when i get some time. Umm lets see thats about it for this week i don't have any idea waht we are going to do today for fun but we'll see what happens. Well Happy ST. Pattys day! Love ya guys!
Elder Downs

March 15, 2011-Email

2011-03-15T17:50:00.001-07:00

Hey Everybody,
So because its spring break i don't get to use good computers, i have to use the crapy ones from the public library so i'm not to happy about this. And i don't have to long they cut down the time so i have to hurry. I'm really excited for this next week it should be a blast! I figured out i am staying with 2 missionaries. one of them i know the other i have no idea who it is. So that should be really interesting. The only thing that i am not looking forward to is the lasagna, it seems like they always do that at least twice during the meetings or some sort of pasta. Other then that i can't wait for it. It should be really fun to see everybody again. So i had an interesting talk witht he zone leaders this week i guess they said that president wants me to go zone leader in the next couple of transfers so they were wondering what i thought about that and told me that i would need to pick it up which i thought that i was already doing a good job but i guess you can always do better. This week was a really good week for us. We taught alot of lessons and were able to talk to alot of people. We went on exchanges with the zone leaders here and it was a blast. Elder Glazier went with me which was so much fun its been a year since we worked together. And i figured out he goes home really soon well i guess most elders i know are going home which is not so much fun. Elder jackson goes home in 3 months. Thats crazy i think. We finally got back jacobs bike back! we haven't used it yet because its been really misty and rainy the last 2 days. So he will be using it in anadarko for the next week. To answer some questions theres only 4 of us in our district us and anadarko. They come over every p-day to have some fun. Mainly we go play snooker or play some board games or go drive around town looking for something to do. Next week we might go bowling so that will be fun. I'm glad dads feeling better thats always good news. I finally saw a dodge journey here. Its not to bad, looks more like a car then a van so thats good. I wouldn't mind driving it around when i get home... anythings better then the van so yeah. Today we are going to play snooker then we have to teach a lesson before we leave then we have dinner with our neighbors. So its going to be a fun filled day. This week will be a nice break from chickasha i will be back up in the city so that will be nice. And after that transfers are basically a week and a half away. This transfer went by really fast! Well i have to get going i have to do some other stuff before i get kicked off. So i'll talk to you next week have a good week!
Love ya
Elder Downs

March 10, 2011-Email

2011-03-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody...
Another week down and another started. This week was ok not to bad. We still haven't found our investigator yet. Its been a little frustrating and really kind of stressful that she doesn't ever call us back. So we are going to try and catch her before next week. Next week is the 4 day meeting again. Its funny it seems like it was just the last one but they are doing another one so it will be fun hopefully! Other then that we have been doing good. We still haven't got Jacobs' bike back yet but we are hoping that we will be able to get that this week. We are going to be strapped on miles if we don't get it. Which will be interesting with transfers on the 30th. Oh guess what we had for dinner? Prime Rib! it was so good our eternal investigators cooked some for us. They are also going to cook us some T-Bone steaks. we are getting spoiled from them. Thats about all thats new. Not anything really going on just same old same old. We are going to tract a bunch this upcoming week so that should be interesting. President wants us to start finding more people to teach so we are going to try. Oh our baptism this week is off. The dad isn't ready hes still smoking which is frustrating. So we are going to have to have a serious sit down with him and talk about it. His son wants to be baptized and has been ready for the past 2 months. Brandon is back out in the oil fields, so he wont be back till 2 weeks. Hes pretty funny he got his tax return so he went up to the city and spent most of it. I don't know what he bought but i guess he had some fun. Well i'm going to sign off for today and i'll write some more next week. I'm glad that dads backs feeling better. Have fun conducting haha :)
Love ya guys
Elder Downs

February 28, 2011-Email

2011-02-28T16:18:00.000-08:00

Hey Everybody!
How are you doing today? I'm doing just swell. Its been an interesting week here in chickasha. The weather has been pretty crazy from so cold that i need a heavy coat to i wish i could wear shorts. We had zone conference this week also. That was really good. And of course i had to demonstrate in front of everybody,for some reason i always end up doing that. It went good though. Then we got Elder Jacobs' bike back finally. Then the next day we went out riding and my bike was acting up so i took it to an elder in anadarko he fixed it for me and then we got back and started riding and my companions pedal fell off again. That was a huge blow to him. So not much got done that day. Then after a little while he was better which is good. We saw brandon this week but he kind of ditched us this weekend for some reason oh well were hopefully going to catch him before he leaves again. Hes not baptized... yet. Were still working on the smoking thing, thats basically his only hold up. We found our investigator but we lost her again. She wasn't there for an appointment and then didn't come to church and wasn't there that night. So shes lost again and wont answer the phone, but hopefully we can get in contact with her again. Shes ready to be baptized she just needs to start coming to church. Other then that its been about the same. I have a little bit of a cold but i've been taking alot of vitamin c so thats helping out. Lets see to answer some of your questions. I cut my own hair. Transfers are on the 30th of march. Yeah i liked the valentines box that was fun. And yes i cleaned and yes i got the sheets and towel. Thats about it we are going to play some snooker today and then play some games i think. I'm not quite sure yet but thats kind of fun for a little while not having stuff that you NEED to do. We have a baptism not this week but the next one so hopefully everythings going good with that so we can baptize him. Well i guess its on the dad he just needs to stop smoking so that he can baptize him, But i guess thats easier said then done. I'm glad that the van is gone and i like the journey its better then the van so yeah. How do you guys like it? Hopefully dads back gets feeling better. I had some problems with my back a while ago but it passed after a week or 2 so hopefully it will for him too. Well were late off today so i'll talk to you guys later have a good week!
Love ya
Elder Downs

February 22, 2011-Email

2011-02-25T14:27:00.001-08:00

Hey everybody!
How was your week this week? Mine was pretty good. We were able to get a lot done, even though it was transfers week. The good news about this week is that we found our lost investigator. Its been about 4 weeks since we actually have seen her or even talked to her. She, I guess, has been out of town because of the storms and we just barely caught her so it was a good thing we tried. We did set another baptismal date with her though for in april. She's ready for it but she needs to come to 3 times to get baptized so thats the only thing thats holdling her back. We also taught a bunch of people so it was a good week all in all. Brandon is back this week which i'm excited about we haven't taught him in a long time with the storms and the 4 day meeting. The weather has been warm and nice. Its been in the 70's or 80's this last week. Its so nice and we haven't been able to bike since Jacobs bike is still in the shop... But we are picking it up tomorrow when we go to Lawton for Zone Conferece. I'm pretty excited about that i've been wanting to bike for the last week. The new elder here fixed up my bike for me so that i can stop now! Thats been nice all i really need is maybe a new tire on the back but i can survive without one if i'm not in a bike area. This week should be interesting and fun! I'm excited we have a lot of stuff to do and not enough time to do it. I like the new car. It doesn't look like a van so i guess thats ok. at least it doesn't have the sliding door haha. Did you buy it brand new? Take some more pictures of it and in the inside so i can see it. Well i don't have to much time today we got to get things done since we are losing a day this week. We also got to make sure our car is in tip top shape. Talk to you guys next week!
Love ya!
Elder Downs

February 15, 2010-Email

2011-02-15T17:08:00.000-08:00

Hey Everybody!Hows it going with everybody? Well i'm doing better that the weatheris working on our side now. We had another storm where we were stuckinside for another day and that also meant that we couldn't make it upto blanchard another day so we had to wait till yesterday to go up andtry to see some people. It was a big bust, we didn't see anybodythat we wanted to which is sad but we are hoping for a better weekthis week with the near 80 degree weather. Which is pretty much a 100degree difference since last week. I'm really lucky that i haven'tgotten sick, it seams like everybody around us is but we haven'tyet... knock on wood... The crazy thing is there is still snoweverywhere in big piles and it was almost 70 yesterday, that is justmessing with my mind. Oh i guess your probably wanting the bignews to see if i'm staying or going to somewhere exotic. Well the bignews is that we both are staying for another 6 weeks. So i'm ok withit i kind of wanted to stay another 6 weeks but i think after this iwant out. I think its time to see more of oklahoma like norman orsomething. Well i guess i'm suppose to stay and work with brandonmore and get him baptized hopefully. He pretty much told me if ileave that he would probably give up so i guess its a good thing istayed. Lets see that pretty much the big news. Not much else is goingon we have zone conference next week which i'm excited about. i get tosee some people but the sad thing is i wont go to transfers to saygoodbye to everybody which is to bad. But i guess i can see themlater. I can't believe febuary is almost over already. It seams likeit just started not to long ago. Time is flying by...Well i'll talk to you guys next week! Happy Valentines Day and love ya!
Elder Downs

February 8, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-02-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

Hey Everybody!Wow its been a long and boring week! We have been stuck inside allweek pretty much. The storm came in monday night and we got stuckinside till friday morning. We got out a little bit butmainly we were stuck inside. I thought that i was going to drivemyself crazy. Lets see umm thats about the big news for the week. Wehave another storm coming in tomorrow so it will probably be the samething this next week. They even cancelled Zone Conference this nextweek because of it. I wasn't to happy about that. That means i wont beable to see some people before they go home. But oh well i can't doanything about it. Transfers are pretty much in a week but they mighthave to move it due to weather too. We are suppose to get anotherstorm on transfers so i don't know whats going to happen it should beinteresting. Well lets see the highlight of our week was yesterday. Wewent over to our 98 year old investigators house and cook a pizza andate it then read from the scriptures. That was pretty fun. I heardthat the superbowl was a good game. Sad that i missed it but i will behome for the next one so that will be fun. We haven't seen ourbaptismal dates in blanchard in 2 weeks almost 3. So i have no ideawhats going on we'll probably have to move them back. My companionhasn't fixed his bike yet so i don't know when he will since ZoneConference was moved back. Hes doing better so as of right now hewants to stay so thats a good thing. Well i have to get going not muchgoing on so we need to get some stuff done before tomorrow when thebig storm hits...love ya guys
Elder Downs

Heres some pictures...Me playing in the snow and then i grew out my beard for fun. I was madwhen i had to shave it...Fun Fun :)

February 1, 2011-Email

2011-02-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

Hey ya'll How are you guys doing? Its been a long and interesting week. I'mstill super tired from it all. We left early tuesday morning to getthere on time and then it was day in and day out of meetings all day.We stayed with some other missionarys this time there was a total of 8of us there for 4 days. It was packed and i had to sleep on the floor.And as i'm sure ya'll know that i can't sleep when i sleep on thefloor. I think i got a total of 4-5 hours everynight if i was luckymost of the time it was 3. And it didn't help with all of us inbasically one room haha so everybody was talking till midnight mostnights. My training went good i guess president came in and listenedto most of it and he said that i did an amazing job so i guess it wasok. In case you were wondering i gave like an hour training onrevelation through the book of mormon, but i mainly focused onpondering and how that will cause revelation. The meeting was reallyfun but i'm excited to be sleeping a bed even though it doesn't fit.My companion was in andarko which is just west of us by 20 miles hestayed there till i got back. Then after that we really didn't havemuch success. Even on a beautiful 80 degree saturday in january. Icouldn't believe it and then yesterday was in the high 20's. It was ahuge difference! I'm really lucky that i'm not sick like everybody wetalk to. I still haven't figured that out yet but i guess someone iswatching out for us. We should have a baptism in 2 weeks hopefullyright before transfers and one not to long after that. And maybe 2more after that. This week is suppose to be really bad weather. We gotan e-mail from president saying that we are suppose to stay insidetomorrow and not go out which is going to be alot of fun i have afeeling but hopefully after that it will be alot better weather so wecan get out and see people. Well thats about it for big news thisweek. Did you guys get my letter this last week with the news paperclipping? What did you think of it? hahaha well i'll write more nextweek about our fun filled week. Thanks for the new towel i need onepretty bad. Well love ya'll and talk to you next week
Elder Downs

January 24, 2011-Email & Pics

2011-01-26T18:47:00.000-08:00

Hey Everybody!How are you doing this week? This was a great week! We actually hadthe baptism yesterday after a lot of stress and planning it actuallyhappened. The only thing is that it was another super small andbasically secret baptism. The only people there was us, our branchpresident and there family. So it was interesting but its over withnow and they are on the right path. The only bad part about the wholething was that the font took forever to fill up so by the time we hadto do it it was not even up to my knees... so it was a good thing thatthey were both really small. i got them both down and didn't have todo it a second time which was good. Other then that we haven't hadmuch else going on. we have another 2 baptisms coming up next month.We taught the refferal that we got from a member in blanchard and shepretty much was begging us to get baptized. Thats a first for me! Butif shes ready then shes ready she reads a couple of hours everynightfrom the book of mormon and the pamplets that we left. So she isdoing really well. I'm pretty excited this week for the 4 day meeting.Its going to be a blast. I even get to stay with elder mcgill inmoore! He was one of my favorite companions. I think that transfer wasthe most fun on my mission. It sounds like you guys are doing well.its been a little chilly this week and then kind of warm. It can'tdecide if it wants to be winter or not. BUT we did get a 1/8 of aninch of snow on thursday. not even enough to cover the grass but thatsall i have seen! I'm enjoying the weather right now but that meansthis summer is going to be super hot, and i'm not looking forward tothat at all! Hopefully i'll be in a car for the heat of the summerthis time. Transfers are the 16th. There not to hard to figureout its every 6 weeks so after that it will be march 30. Thats how iknow when i will be going home. you don't leave till transfers andtransfers will be on the 7th so that means i will be flying home onthe 8th. Thats how they have been doing it. You actually serve a 2year and 5 day mission so yeah thats the big day. Its really weirdthinking that its only 10 months away. It feels like it was justyesterday that i was only out for 6 months or 9 months. Its crazy howtime has been flying. Heres a picture of the 2 girls i baptized andone with me and them. you can tell how fun it was to baptized themsince they were so small. I'll let y'all know next week about themeeting! Thanks for everything!

Love y'all!Elder Downs

January 18,2011-Email

2011-01-19T17:17:00.000-08:00

Hey whats up?Well its been an interesting week. We taught a bunch of lessons and weare working our butts off. We got a really cool investigator this lastweek. It was when it was really cold and she let us in. And it just sohappened to be the first door that we knocked on! She wasn'tinterested in letting us in but she said come in and get out of thecold and have some hot chocolate were like sweet thanks. Then sheslike well while your here you might as well answer some questions thati have. Then she told us about herself and how she has been trying tolearn more for about 3 years since her sister is a member. so we gaveher a book of mormon and she said come back in 2 weeks so that you cananswer questions... were like sure we can do that. So that wasthe highlight of our week last week. We might be having a baptismreally soon but i don't know quite whats going to happen they didn'tcome to church so we had to postpone it but they said they want itdone before the 26th. So pretty much were in the middle of this tryingto figure it out and its putting alot of stress on us. So what i think whatwill happen is we will have the baptism after church sometime. But ihave no idea. On the brightside though we got a phone call from somebody that moved into theblanchard branch said that he was taking the lessons and wants us tocome up and teach him. So i think that will be another baptism soon!Thats looking really good for up there. That should be at least 3-4baptisms pretty soon. I wish it was that good here in Chickasha butits super slow here. This week we have to go to moore for a trainersmeeting and then next week is the big 4 day meeting again. So thatwill be eating away at our miles. And it just so happens that all ofthese cool new investigators are super far away so we are burningmiles like crazy. Which means we will be biking almost everyday hereas soon as elder jacobs gets his bike back. (he broke it his 3 dayout) But thats the big news so far. Elder jacobs is doing better hewas about to go home last week but i told him i would tape him to hischair if he decided to do that. He laughed and i told him i wasserious. He is enjoying it more now. We are starting to work out too.the last week and a half we have been running everynight and trying toin the morning. We run around 2 miles at night and a mile in themorning. We are getting along good so thats good. No problems so far.Wow i can't believe that dad cleaned his shop! It doesn't look thesame at all! Yeah i loved the pictures and videos from my memory card.That made me laugh especially when dad had to cover his ears haha.What did you think of my memory card? You didn't expect the picture ofme on a camel did you? How cool is that? I shouldn't have tospeak in church for a while but i wouldn't mind it. I'm use to talkingto a bunch of people now its pretty funny. Well i have to get going,have a great week and i'll let you know about how the baptism worksout or if it even does!!!
Love y'all ELDER DOWNS

January 10, 2011-Email

2011-01-11T16:06:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody!Hows life treating you guys? This week has been an interesting one. Igot my new companion, his name is Elder Jacobs. Hes from a small town20 min north of cedar city. So another one from Utah haha. Hes doinggood now he had a bad couple of days and wanted to go home. We had agood talk though and at working our butts off and now hes staying soits good. But lets just say its been a long week, really long week.The funny thing about him though is he makes me look small. How funnyis that? He weighs about 330 and is over 6 feet so when i stand nextto him he makes me look kind of small. I think its kind of funny.Other then that its been fun hes a good kid just has had a rough pastand is trying to find himself out here. Which is a good thing but hewasn't expecting missionary work to be so rejectful i told him thatits a weird day if we don't get at least 20 doors slammed in our face.Hes like really? I'm like yeah. This week we got a refferal from somemembers in blanchard and we met her and she is goldedn! Litteraly sheis golden she will be baptized in a few months i have a feeling we aregoing back on friday to teach more and to set a date with her. Thatwas a good confidence boost for my comp that made him feel like it wasall worth it. I told him that happens when you work hard God willbless you for your efforts. This is excatly what happened about 7months ago with Charles too. I think its pretty cool. This week shouldbe a great week we should set 2 dates maybe more this week so i'mpretty excited about that. The weather here has been just really cold.we got like a 30 second storm yesterday were it was sleeting but otherthen that its just been a little cold. Its suppose to start warming upthe end of this week again be in the 40's or the 50's. Our car wasiced over today but thats the worst its done. Lets see thats about allthe new news. Sounds like libby's loving staying with you guys. i'msending home my memory card this week so you can see christmas andstuff theres not to much pictures but a few. Today we are just goingto relax and then play some snooker, english version of pool. So itwill be alot of fun. Talk to y'all next week i loved the blogs. Theymade me laugh!
Love y'all Elder downs

January 3, 2011-Email

2011-01-04T14:51:00.001-08:00

hello everybody,so you want the bigs news? well i think i'll wait for a little bit totell you maybe in the middle of e-mail hahaha. and sorry about notsending pictures this time. they gave me the one computer thats fromthe 70's i swear so it has no usb port that i can use. so next week iwill definetly send some pending on which computer i get. we actuallyhad a really good week we taught almost 20 lessons which is reallygood for us and usually unheard of the week before transfers. we aregetting closer with our baptismal date here in chickasha. after about3 months of trying to get him to come to church he finally cameyesterday and said he would be back. the only thing that dampers thesituation is that he works in the oil fields so hes here 2 weeks thengone 2 weeks. so we barley see him. so thats a struggle but he came!!!lets see we should be having about 3-4 baptisms in blanchard the nextcouple of months and hopefully the one here in the next few months.anyway have i prolonged enough to were you want to know whatshappening with me? ok i'll tell you. i'm staying here in chickasha foranother 6 weeks. and guess what else i will be doing... yeah thatsright i will be training another missionary. so elder dewey is goingup to edmond, i'm very jealous about that, and i will be staying here.i couldn't believe that call when i got it from president on saturday.i was for sure that i was leaving but i'm giving up on guessing i'mnever right on these things i've found out. so yeah thats the big newsfor this week. we also have a 4 day training meeting again this month!i'm looking forward to that and so yeah we will be up in moore alotthis month. everybody around here was pretty excited that i wasstaying though so i guess thats a good thing. our baptismal date here,brandon, was really excited i think he really likes me a lot so thatsalways a good thing. and the other elders in anadarko are staying tooso its just dewey leaving which is probably a good thing. other then
that we haven't beendoing much else trying to tract and find new people but thats aboutit. oh guess what i had yesterday for the first time. crab cakes....chris and lynda our investigators that feed us all the time made somefor us. they were actually really good. i will miss her cooking thoughwhen i go so yeah thats about it i'll try to send pictures next weekwhen i get a better computer. love ya'll and have a great week i'lltry to survive the 50-75 degree weather that we have been having. itwas 75 on thursday!love y'all

December 27,2010-Email

2010-12-29T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hello,Well since i can't e-mail pictures i better send an e-mail so that momdoesn't drive here and stangle me. so lets see this last week has beenreally crazy. its been alot of stress trying to find things to do sothat i wouldn't have to tract on or around christmas. but we wereable to find enough things to do so that we didn't have to tract toolong. we had exchanges on christmas eve with the zone leaders. thatwas actually really fun. there were 2 former companions some of myfavorite ones so it was really cool. then for christmas eve we didn'thave anybody invite us over so we went with the elder in anadarko to amembers house and had dinner with them. it was really fun. thenchristmas was spent with our eternal investigators, they have beentaking the lessons for 2 years, chir and lynda. they were reallyfunny. then yesterday we were up in blanchard for the day. we had 2big dinners and tried a bunch of people who were not home so that wasbasically our weekend haha not to exciting. our weather here is reallynice its in the 40's with not a cloud in the sky that i can see. sadnews is that i haven't seen any snow in about a year and maybe wont atall. transfers are on the 5th i have a feeling that i'm probably goingagain. they usually don't keep me in an area to long so i wonder wherei'll go. it was a good phone call home on christmas. i lost tract oftime and didn't realize that it was like an hour and a half, oops hahaoh well. but i'm doing really good enjoyed christmas and all thepresents and the music. its sad that christmas music is done now. wellthats about it for this week. i'll write more next week.
love y'all!elder downs

December 22, 2010-Email

2010-12-29T09:34:00.000-08:00

HeyHow's everybody doing this week? i'm doing just great. Its been a longweek of hard work. we have been tracting from 2-4 hours a day tryingto find more people to teach and we really haven't found anybodyreally solid yet. so its going to be interesting the start of thisnext year. we had zone conference this last week so it was good to seeeverybody in our zone again. but i just found out that i wont be ableto see elder lewis before he goes home on the 30th. so i'm really kindof sad about that. we spent alot of time in blanchard this week, 2days. but it was definetly worth it we found out that we will more the95 % sure that they will have 3 baptisms the start of the next year.they are really excited about that. other then that we haven't beendoing much else besides tracting. i hope y'all got my chirstmas cardthat i sent out. i ran out of stamps so i couldn't send them toeverybody that i wanted to. i'm really looking forward to christmas itshould be really fun. i totally forgot to send the answers to theriddle things with the letter this last week so i will send them wheni get some more stamps. other then that, thats the big news for thisweek. hope everybody is having a good christmas so far. sorry thise-mail is short but i figure i will let you know more when i talk toyou on the phone. i'm planning on calling at 7:00 my time so 6 ortime. i will call the home phone unless you tell me other wise
so if not let me know what number. well i have to go mytimes up sadly. have a great christmas! love y'all!elder downs

December 13, 2010-Email

2010-12-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

hey whats up?hey everybody how y'all doing? well its been a good and a bad week. wehad the new trainers meeting in moore on tuesday and then we were inblanchard 2 other days. we did set 2 dates with people. both of themare for Jan 22. one in chickasha and the other in blanchard. the onein chickasha isn't as solid as the one in blanchard but we are hopingfor both in that one day! other then that we have been tracting likecrazy to try to get more people to teach but we haven't had any luckwe haven't given out a book of mormon at all this last week which is abummer but i guess that means this week will be 100 times better. i'mgetting excited for christmas. Instead of a wendys gift card could i get one towalmart instead. we don't have a wendys within 100 miles of were weare. yeah its pretty crazy. so either that or one to subway. yeah i'mtrying to workout everyday. we have been getting fat with all thedeserts everybody is making for us because of the holidays. yeah i amloving the presents everyday they totally make my day. the woopiecushion .the laffy taffy was a good one too. yeah i'm doing ok for christmasi'll have everything that i need i believe. we will be at chris andlyndas for christmas like thanksgiving and we will probably go withour neighbors for lunch again. we have had the blanchard branch partyalread and chickasha's is this sunday so we are excited for some goodfree food. me and elder dewey are doing ok. we both don't like to bewrong so he starts to argue and then gets mad because hes arguing withme so i think its kind of funny but i'm just keeping my mouth shutmost of the time. transfers are jan 5. i have no idea if i will stayor go this time i just don't even guess anymore. oh and the eldersaddress is 1704 McGregor Avewichita fall, texas 76301its elder jeff lewis and elder tylan jacksonthey should get a kick out of that haha and let me know the plans forchristmas when you want us to call. we will more then likely call atnight like last year so just plan on that till i say other wise. iwish i could be there to hear dad sing in the choir. we got roppedinto singing this last week and we didn't even know about it and i'mnot going to lie it sounded horrible but oh well. have fun with thekids and tell everybody i say hi and everybody is jimmy baboo!
love y'all elder downs

December 6, 2010-Email

2010-12-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

hey everybody hows it going?wow its been a fun filled week. its also been really pretty crazy andstressfull. we taught a bunch of lessons this week which was good andthen on december 2 my year mark was temple conference! so i got to goto the temple with a bunch of friends. it was awesome! we got to gowith half the mission so there was a bunch of people there. so thattook up most of the day then we went to a bbq place for dinner. letssee thats the big news here. its been kind of a rough week too. wewere suppose to have a baptism this friday the 10th but thats notgoing to happen and then the other date we had we went over there toteach her and she dropped us. it was pretty rough. but yeah i got allthe messages, all but one. i will send them in a letter to you thisweek i was going to do it last week but it was really crazy. i haveloved the daily presents. i do it every morning. we have the most funwith the two dart guns and the burger king crowns till they got rippedup from both of us trying to be king. elder dewey is doing good. hesstarting to get on my nerves though. hes like my shadow if i move anfoot over he does too if i get up he gets up. its a really weirdfeeling. so what am i going to get for getting all but one messageright i might get it though i'm going to work on it today. the weatherhas been pretty nice in the 40's 50's or 60's. no rain or snow sincei've been here. i think i got all the packages from the mission homebut if not i will eventually. yes i am still the district leader. soi have double duties. we meet once a week for district meeting likealways. and they are coming up today for p-day. oh i forgot to tellyou. i was in a parade on saturday. we walked in it and passed out joyto the world dvd's. it was pretty fun but kind of chilly with thewind. umm yeah thats about it for this week. i'll talk to you guysnext week with more updates!
love all y'all!elder downs

November 29,2010-Email & Pics

2010-12-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

howdy everybody!hey whats going on? not to much here this last week. its been a prettycrazy week! with transfers and thanksgiving its been super crazy! letssee i'm doing great the weather this last week has been up and down wehad 2 super cold days because of the wind, and the others have beenactually pretty nice still in the 60's. i got the packages andeverything just in time for the super cold weather so it was reallynice. lets start off with transfers. they were on wednesday so thatswhen i met my new companion elder dewey. hes from rock springswyoming so not to far away. there actually was another new elderthat went to viewmont that said he knew me from high school. that waspretty crazy we had a lot of the same friends in school. yeah elderdewey is kind of tall and extremely shy! he barley says anything inlessons and stuff so its been an interesting first week, but hes doingbetter then when he started out so thats a bonus! we had 2thanksgiving dinners which we weren't expecting, well actually we had3. 2 on thanksgiving and 1 on saturday. the first one on thanksgivingwas more like a lunch it was at noon with our neighbors. then we haddinner with our eternal investigators at 2:00. they feed us 1-3 timesa week usually. there pretty funny but we ate so much! i ate more theni probably should have and was super stuffed! elder dewey ate so muchthat he couldn't swollow anything more haha i was laughing about that.after that we just relaxed and didn't do much because we were so full.and nobody was really home. so that was our thanksgiving nothing tospecial but it was pretty good. thats about all the big news thislast week. to answer some questions yes we get along the only thing isthat he is really quiet so i've been trying to work with that. yeah igot the tree too. and its hanging up on the wall with a couple of thedecorations i could't put them all on the tree. but i will startopening presents on the first like the letter said. it sounds likeyour guy's thansgiving was pretty good! and staying up all night musthave been crazy. thats to much shopping for me i would rather pay fullprice then to go to the stores with all the crazy people! i have allbut 3 of the codes done i will send them all in a letter when i getthe last one. well lets see thats about it. have a great week and i'lltalk to y'all later!

ELDER DOWNS

heres some pictures the first one is of me and elder smith then elder jackson my trainer then me and my new companion elderdewey. our family treethen heres a picture of the lights that i put up!

November 22, 2010-Email

2010-11-23T16:36:00.000-08:00

hey everybody!well another week is gone and its the end of the transfer so its timefor transfer calls... and it was kind of a shock for the both of us. ihad a feeling that we were going to stay together another transfer andso did elder smith but that wasn't the case. he is leaving here andgoing to altus south east of chickasha and i will be staying heregetting a brand new missionary. so yeah i will be training this next 6weeks which should be interesting with 2 holidays this transfer. soall i know is that i'm training and i will find out who my newcompanion is when i meet him wednesday morning. so thats been the bigexcitment around here. i'm pretty excited about it but also reallynervous about the whole thing but i guess it will all work out. thislast week has been a long one we really didn't do to much elder smithgot really pretty sick with a bad cold and with the wind here hedidn't want to go outside at all so we tried all of our investigatorseach day and then he came home and slept while i tried to study. wewere able to tract for about 2 hours on thursday though so that wasawesome, but i'm looking forward to being able to get out of the houseagain. its super boring when your stuck inside by yourself prettymuch. this week is thanksgiving too and we are going to one of ourinvestigators houses to eat so it should be way fun. shes a reallygood cook too! we will be over there for christmas too. oh we have abaptism on the 10th of december. i'm pretty excited about that. wellif everything goes according to plan which i think it will all she hasto do is quit smoking which she wants to do. but be praying for her.her name is amy baker. oh i have gotten most of the mystery messagesall but 2. the one with a bunch of boxes or whatever is giving me someproblems. i'm sending home a little box with some stuff in it: my oldplanners some letters and ward rosters so that should be coming inthis week or next week when i can send them. it will have my memorycard in it too. umm yeah thats about all i got for this week. so i'lltalk to y'all next week!
love yaelder downs

November 15, 2010-Email

2010-11-18T15:54:00.000-08:00

hello!whats going on this week? hows it been? mine has been super fast iswear i was e-mailing you about a day ago. but with the big 4 daymeeting it went by super fast. so yeah we left tuesday morning about 8and got there just in time for it to start at 9. then we were theretill about 8:30 at night since we had to get interviews. so our firstday there was super long and very tiring! but then we went back to themission home and basically went to bed. then the next day we went at 9and got done around 5 then we had dinner and then we went to go workin an area. but by the time we got it all figured out and stuff whereeverybody was going and getting everybody together we had to startheading back. the next day was about the same but we didn't end tillaround 8 so we just went back to the mission home then on friday wejust came home. it was a blast though! i learned so much and i thinkthat this will change the work even more! but yeah that was ourawesome week. then we came back and had an ok saturday where webaptized 2 of our investigators, but i will say thought it was theweirdest baptism i have ever been to. she wanted it really small sothere was only 5 people there including elder smith and i. and i guessshe can't breath really well in the building for some weird reason soit was all done really quick because she was about to pass out. so thewhole think took maybe 15 min. yeah i couldn't believe it. then thatsabout it so my computer is about to shut off so i have to make thisrealy quick. so yeah i will send my memory card home when i can thisweek or next. yeah i want my coat but wait till next week and i willtell you and about the christmas presents. well sorry i will talk to you
next week have agood week!
love y'all bye!!!!!!!!elder downs

November 7, 2010-Email

2010-11-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

hey whats up?hey how y'all doing? Its been a good week here in chikcasha! we taughta bunch of lessons and i got to go on exchanges with elder lewis! thatwas a blast! we used alot of miles on our car this last week thoughand we will next week too since i'm going up to moore again for the 4day meeting. so this week is going to be a crazy one. we have thatmeeting from tuesday till friday then we have a baptism on saturday.for a mom and a son. they have been wanting to get baptized foreverand we have been pushing the date back for months i guess. so itsfinally time to get them in and baptize them. ummm let see not muchelse is going on around here just the same old stuff. its pretty warmhere still in the 70's during the day its in the high 50's in themorning but it warms up alot. sounds like you guys are all busy withthe holidays. thats a good thing. we are too but we don't have alot todo after it gets dark we see everybody during the day and then we havenothing to do at night since we aren't allowed to go tracting. oh soyou know transfers are coming up again which is a crazy thought! butthey are the day before thanksgiving. and then the next transfer isthe last wednesday in december. so next transfer we will getthanksgiving and christmas. i think that i will stay at least one morehere but you never know i might be a one and done here. chickasha isgrowing on me a little bit but i still would rather serve in one of myprevious areas. not so much the south part of the city. we meet thisweekend in the double wide for church we switch off every other week.and yes they are getting a new building soon. they have the plans forit and everything. i think they start on it the start of next year. sothey are really excited about that. i got your mystery letter stuffand i got the first 2. the first one you sent was happy thanksgivingand the 2nd was you are jimmy baboo. the third that i just got todaywas alot harder since there was no repeating letters. so it could beanything so thats a tough one. but i think that the 3rd one is givethanks. so let me know if i'm right or wrong. yes that is our house onthe picture. its the one on the right. ask dad if you have problemstelling which one is right and left haha lets see thats about it. ihave a bunch of pictures on this memory card that i'm sending homesoon so you can see what i did for the last 3 months. these computersare dumb here and wont let me plug in my camera so i would send somepictures if i could. oh i need some oil. could you send me somesometime? and the key chain thing broke the glass on it busted socould you get a cheep one that doesn't have any glass? cool thanks.well thats about it. thanks! well lets see i've got to get going wehave some trucks to go work on. so have a great day i'll let you knowall about the meeting and the baptism next week!
love ya bye!elder downs

November 1, 2010-Email

2010-11-07T16:38:00.000-08:00

hey everybody!how are you doing this week? well i'm doing pretty good. this weekwent by pretty fast i can't believe that i've been here for almost 3weeks already. not much has changed this last week. we set a newbaptismal date with one of our investigators which i thought wasawesome, but she didn't come to church this week which was depressing.oh church thats right we talked in church this last week. it wentreally well. i changed my talk last minute and ended up talking aboutconversion before you share the gospel and then easy ways to share thegospel. then elder smith talked about the whole concept of missionarywork. but i think it was a hit we had a lady come up to us and haveus giver her our phone number so that she could call us when she findssomebody to teach. so i think we did a pretty good job. me and eldersmith are getting along great! its been a crazy couple of weeks withhim. haha funny story this last week he started to talk in his sleepand it woke me up and i looked over and he had his hands up in the airlike he was riding a motorcycle (he raced them back home) and hestarted to make engine noses like he was racing so i started to askhim some questions and he answered. it was pretty funny i still get akick out of it everytime i think about it. and the next night he wasan airplane shooting missiles. so its never been a dull moment herewith him. so thats made it a fun 3 weeks. with halloween this week endwe didn't get much work done. i got to go to 2 trunk or treats i wenton exchanges with the other elders in my district. so yeah you askedthat question i think we have 5 elders in our district. us andanadarko who have 3 elders there. then saturday night we had our trunkor treat here in chickasha. it was fun but since its such a smallbranch not many people showed up. but we got to run a little bowlinggame which was fun but got tiring after a while. we also carved ourpumpkins. we actually did 2 each because we had so much fun doingthem. i carved a skull and cross bones and a guy screaming and my compdid a wolf and 3 skulls. i took some pictures so that you could seethem but the computers here at this library wont let you plug yourcamera in and send pictures so yeah. i did take pictures of my suits i loved the pictures of all the kidsin there costumes. they looked pretty cool. i dressed up as amissionary here so that was pretty scary for some people. they evenran from us in terror haha. lets see thats about it. i'm glad you gotto meet bro thatcher. hes a great guy! he had us over for dinner somuch it was a blast at their house. well i've got to get going weare late today since we had to wait for computers. its good to hearfrom all of you guys
love all y'allELDER DOWNS

October 25, 2010-Email

2010-10-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

hey everybody!how are you doing today? i'm doing ok its been a crazy week. we had asuper zone conference with a 70 elder zwik came and spoke to us for afew hours. it was pretty cool i got to talk to him for a min and hewas really pretty nice and is a spiritual giant. i couldn't believeit. but it was really cool we got to spend a few hours with him and hetaught us about preach my gospel and more about working with members.the coolest thing though was i got to see some missionaries that ihaven't seen in a long time. i thought that, that was pretty coolsadly i didn't get to see my old district they were in the otherconference. so that was a really cool friday and it was nice it tookthe place of district meeting this week so i didnt have to plananything out for that. to answer your question yes i am still districtleader. and yes i still have to plan one out everyweek, plus this weeki have to give a 20 min talk in chickasha. so i'm going to be busyworking for both of those this week. lets see not much else is goingon we worked hard this week and were planning on setting over 10baptismal dates with investigators here but sadly enough basicallyeverything feel through we only were able to have 3 but i'm stillpretty excited about that. this next week will be better i have afeeling! so hopefully things will be exciting here in chickasha andblanchard. oh we went to blanchard this last week for church (weswitch off every other week) and we met in the double wide trailer. iguess they are suppose to be building a new building were the old one.sometime end of this year to the start of next year. but they reallyneed a new one! so i saw the pictures of libby and yeah she definetlyhas more hair then dad does haha she looks really cute though wish icould be there. give her a kiss for me! so lets see to answer yourquestions we have a washer and a dryer in our apartment so we dolaundry whenever we need to. we have a walmart here in chickasha so wego shopping there. i have 4 long sleeve shirts which i think will beenough i will let you know if i need some more. but i will probablyget a 17 if i get some i think. my suites are black and a dark darkgray. so i want a black sweater... long sleeve, and a dark darkdark gray one if they have one if not black will work. we have onlyhad one dinner at our apartment. but we don't really eat at membershomes. its either less actives or investigators we eat with. weusually eat with members in blanchard when we go up there once a week.we have a car with alot of miles but when we have to go to blanchard1-2 times a week it sucks the miles out so we end up biking a littlebit. but its not to bad in a small town theres not alot of cars at allso its really nice and the weather has been awesome. we e-mail mondayslike always. well tell everybody hi from me and i'm glad that kylieand libby are doing good. i love y'all elder downs

October 18, 2010-Email

2010-10-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!hi so hows your week going? Mines been an interesting one. it startedoff with us going to the cowboy museum for my last p-day in edmond.that was a blast i got some cool pictures. then i had a hectic lastday trying to see everybody then finishing off with going over to thethatchers to say bye. i gave him a box of stuff that hes going to taketo you. it has some shirts a pair of thermals and a suit . it was hard
to say goodbye to them they were sodepressed when they found out that i was going. but after that ifinished packing and left wednesday morning to moore then down tochickasha. yeah and its pronounced chichashaaaaa. not shaw. its with along a at the end. they get really upset when you don't say it writebelieve me. but its an interesting little town... LITTLE town. itsalot smaller then ardmore. its only a branch here and this last weekat church there was only about 30 people there and 75 % of them wereolder people. so its a big difference then what i'm use to. i alsocover another branch. we got to that one every other sunday its inblanchard which is about 20 min. east of chickasha. and get this theyhave around 75 members that go i guess and they outgrew the chapel inthere building so they pulled up a double wide trailer next to it tohave sacrament meeting in. yeah you read that right a double wide.when we drove by it i couldn't believe it. blanchard is a small towntoo so its just a bunch of really small towns that we cover. which i'mnot to fond of. but oh well i can't really do anythingabout it. i think brian would probably love it here. lets see oh forp-day we went and worked at a mechanics shop. its a dodge shop. thefamily that owns it is less active so we started going over there totry and get them to come back. it was pretty fun we took the axels offone old crashed up dodge and put it on a new frame. that was prettyfun. they are building a custom dodge for somebody i guess so we getto help out with it. other then that, thats about all we did. i forgotmy camera cord so i can't send any pictures today but i promise i willnext week. yeah i love my new companion hes from lehi too. he actuallyonly lives about a mile away from jerilyn. just south of theroundabout and a little west. oh an my new address is:1110 Chickasha Ave.Chickasha, OK 73018lets see not much else is going on. the pumpkins looked really good.you guys did a good job carving them. not as good as mine last yearbut it was still good. oh yeah we live in a duplex thats about twicethe size of my last apartment so i am really happy about that. but ourneighbors are really pretty cool its a mom and daughter and herdaughter. but they bought a bunch of pumpkins and gave us two to carveso we get to carve pumpkins! lets see i haven't written thank you'syet but i will i've been super busy unpacking and we have been goneall the time. i do need some more stamps though. other then that,thats all i can say this week. i'll talk to you guys next week!
lovey'all elder downs!

October 11, 2010-Email

2010-10-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

hey everybody
hey so i apologize but this will be a short e-mail due to me leaving in 2 days. i got the phone call last night and i'm going to chickasha. so yeah i'm really not to happy about this i wanted one more transfer here everything was going really good and now i have to leave. i really don't like transfers! my new companion is going to be elder smith, who is a really cool guy so i already knew him before but yeah i really didn't want to leave my district. i guess oh well i'll see them some time. but i'm going down pretty much to a 4 man district which probably wont be as much fun here. but replacing me here is elder jackson which i thought was funny. anyway our week was long. we set 3 baptismal dates here on the first lesson and they will set 2 more this next week hopefully. my b-day was pretty fun we moved 2 people then i went over to the thatchers for dinner. which was way fun. she showed me the e-mail you sent. we had tacos for dinner then they had a few random presents which was really fun. they aren't to happy that i'm leaving this week they wanted me to stay for 7 months. i'm still going to have them take a box of stuff to you so i have to get that together and stuff before wed. but they took a video of if and lots of pictures that they are planning on sending you sometime i don't know when but sometime soon i'm guessing. lets see we are going to the cowboy museum today for our last p-day. it should be fun well i hope. well i have to get going... thanks for all the b-day stuff! and my suites are great i wore them and i look really pretty good in them if i don't say so myself. my memory card will be on its way soon i didn't have time to take a picture but i will tomorrow and send it next week when i'm in chickasha. love y'all
elder downs

October 4, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-10-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

hi there,
how are you doing today? i'm doing just swell. this week has been a very depressing week its my worst one in edmond but i think that it had to do with conference we lost 2 days of work pretty much so i guess i can't complain to much. let me say though that conference was amazing. there were some great talks. i really liked elder hollands talk at the start of conference which was not his usual talk at all. he usually puts his foot down but it was a really good change of pace. elder uchtdorf's talk and elder eyring's talk in the priesthood session was great too. i loved all of it but kind of glad that its over with for 6 months i don't think that my butt could handle anymore time in those pews. our whole district watched it at our church so it was nice to have other people there and not just mcgill and i. we had lunch with brian which was really good. it was good to see him agian it had almost 6 months since i had dinner with him in ardmore. thats a crazy thought, but he looked good and it was cool to talk to him for a min and get a break from the business. umm thats about it for this week in news and updates. i pick up my suites tomorrow from mens warehouse. i'm so excited. i actually get something that fits not like my old one haha but i will take some pictures and send them to you this next week. i will send a picture today if i can. i loved the package of the scary pictures. i was pretty scared when i got them. and thanks for the gift cards i really appreciate them. the stuff that i learned at the leardership thingy i'm teaching right now every district meeting and every chance i get i'm suppose to. so we had a good district meeting this last week and we have one more till transfers which is weird it feels like i just got elder mcgill here yesterday. but i don't think you'll have to worry i have a feeling that i'm staying another transfer at least. i might be here for christmas which would be cool. i don't have anything planned for my birthday really we are going to dinner with one of my favorite families in the ward the thatchers, by the way he is coming up to utah soon so he said that he would take some stuff up to you so i'll let you know more about it but yeah just a heads up. but other then that just normal stuff we might go get some snow cones with the district after district meeting so that would be fun but yeah thats about it. oh and the new 8 lessons are awesome they are going to help so much i have a feeling!
well thats all i got for y'all this week. have a good week talk to you next week same time same place...
love all y'all
elder taylor "exceeding large in stature" downs

the first one is me and elder mcgill at the masionic temple
the 2nd is me and my 3 favorite companions my first 3
elder jackson, elder glazier and elder lewis love all y'all

September 27, 2010-Email

2010-10-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

hello my family!
how are you doing today? i'm not doing to bad, but what a crazy weeks its been! we started out with going to the masionic temple in guthrie last p-day that was super fun our whole district went up there and got to take the tour for free. it was really interesting i got some really cool pictures from it. so we did that and then the next morning i got picked up and headed down to moore for 4 days. the leardership training meeting was really good. i learned so much from it. the schedule was that we got up in the morning showered... this is at the mission home... studied for a little bit then went to meetings. there was about 8 of us at the mission home and everybody else got spread across the closest apartments to moore. so we would get to the meeting and have 2 hours of instruction on one of the new 8 lessons for us then get an hour to practice it. we would then break for lunch then we would do the same thing except for a new lesson then we would break for dinner where we had to go to our prosleyting area and get dinner or something. so i got assigned to moore 2 and got to work with elder williams who i knew pretty good, he was my district leader in ardmore so we are pretty good friends so we would go work in that area till about 8:30 and then go to the missino home and call our districts to see how they are doing and then go to bed. we did this for 4 days straight. i felt like i was back at the mtc. wake up eat, go to class, eat again, go to class, eat and then go to bed. but i think these new 8 lessons will help out missionary work so much so i'm excited to share what i've learned and apply it when we go out teaching. lets see so thats about it for my news this week thats all i did pretty much. i did get a call from brian he said that he would have to push our lunch or dinner off till this next week which worked best for us too. but i did get my suits! well i paid for them and got them tailored... the only bad part is they were a little more expensive then he said. it ended up costing 420 dollars because of the tailoring. it was like a 100 bucks just to tailor them to me! i thought it was quite ridiculous but the good news is that i'm going to look amazing and that if i gain or lose more weight they will retailor it for me for FREE!! so thats really nice. so hopefully that wasn't to much money if so i'm sorry i couldn't really say no when i was paying for it at the very end but i'm really excited to be able to have some suits that fit me! i'll send some pictures when i get them in on the 5th! good luck witht the fair this week i bet it will do awesome. yeah i'm excited for my birthday i can't wait to be 20 just kidding i feel old now! but it should be fun i think that it will be fun out here with my district, i've gotten pretty close with all of them so its been good. it looked like the party was super fun! wish i could have been there to enjoy in the bbq. but oh well, well thats about it for this week! hope y'all are doing good let me know if i can help in any way!
love all y'all
elder downs

September 20, 2010-Email

2010-09-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

hello family!
hows it going? i'm not doing to bad this week. we had a pretty good week we happened to get 5 new investigators this last week which helped out a bunch. but our zone had a challenge to give out book of mormons and we got second we gave out 10. that doesn't sound like much but 50% of those became new investigators which is really good for our area. but other then that not much has been going on. the suit shopping this last week was kind of a joke but oh well. i have to go back and get refit since they messed up with the order and had a 46 L jacket with 32 pants so yeah thats something i don't think i'll ever be able to wear haha. but i will be able to get 2 new suite for around 300 dollars i'm pretty happy about that. this next week wont be much missionary work for me i have to go down to moore with all the district leaders zone leaders and trainers for a 4 day leadership training thing. so for 4 days i will be in moore and i will stay at the mission home. so this week will go by super fast and hopefully it will be fun. but i think all day meetings wont be as fun so yeah but i will be able to see some friends that i haven't seen a long time. so i am really excited about that! so i wont be back till friday night and i leave tuesay early. other then that i'm doing good. today for p-day we are going to a masionic temple. it just so happens to be the biggest in the world so it should be really cool. Things I may need for Chritmas, my pillow case is alright i might need one sometime soon and sheets too they are getting kind of old. I need some new sweaters well just one or 2 the other ones are way to big. i'll tell you more when it gets closer to winter. but i want a 2 long sleave ones. yeah i don't need short sleeve shirts now anymore i might need like one more long sleave but thats about it. well i have to get going we are running late and i have other people i need to e-mail we ended up helping someone move this morning... yeah thats about 5 in the last 2 weeks and lucky us theres more to come. well have a good week! talk you guys later!
elder downs

September 13, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-09-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

hey whats up?
hey everybody how are you doing today? i'm doing great its been a pretty good week. first off we had a pretty good week all in all with our numbers we taught 26 lessons this week but only got 75 contacts but i guess beggers can't be choosers so i'm not complaning but we had an amazing day on saturday we taught 7 lessons talked to 20 people and baptized prince. that was really awesome the baptism went really good it was really small and simple he didn't really want alot of people there because he is very shy but 10 people showed up which i thought was pretty good for a saturday afternoon while football is going on. i got to baptize him which was an awesome experience. and as you can tell by the picture he is about as tall as me so it was fun. and good news is that i got him down in one go so it was really good. then sunday he was confirmed by my companion elder mcgill. he was 15 min late so we were on pins and needles waiting for him in the foyer but he finally came and we got it done. so yeah hes an awesome guy and should be getting the priesthood very soon. i'm way excited for him! hes going to be an awesome member. lets see not else has happened i'm sending my memory card for sure this week and i'll put on there some pictures of how big my suit is so you can see. other then that i'm doing really good me and elder mcgill are getting along really good so its been an awesome couple of weeks. i have a feeling that we will stay one more together then i will be shipped off to some where else but transfers are not till october 13 i think i'm not sure but i believe thats whats going on so yeah. sounds like mom and dad are going crazy in the bathroom it looks really good i hardly recognized that it was the back bathroom i've been out to long haha sounds like dad is loving being home i bet he does. i bet its nice to sleep in and not have to worry about work. well lets see thats about it hope y'all have a good week talk to you guys next week later skater
love ya, elder taylor downs

here are some pictures for y'all
the first one is of my first baptisms of the lewis kids. mauri, brennon and alex. i baptized alex the little one
second one is me and elder mcgill and prince
third of our group that played soccer last transfer.
fourth and final is me in front of the football field gates at uco!
cool hope you enjoy them

Sept. 7, 2010-Email

2010-09-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

hey how are you doing today?
hey so sorry my e-mail is a day later but the library closed because of labor day i guess and so we were told to come today and e-mail instead of going to a members house which i don't know why but oh well. so lets see umm yeah thats why this is late so forgive me lets see my week this last week has been good transfers came and it was a good change i think and let me say i love having a car again we don't use it to much but its nice having the option to be able to drive. my companion is now elder mcgill like i said last week hes a pretty goofy kid but i like him alot hes been out 3 months longer then me so its not to big of a gap. oh and guess where hes from? germany! yeah how cool is that but his dad was in the military so he lived on base. he doesn't speak much german (which i thought was funny for living there for 19 years) everybody here gives him alot of crap for it which i thought was pretty funny. but yeah thats about it he loves soccer and sports except basketball but oh well. oh yeah prince didn't get baptized this last week we pushed it back to this saturday because we couldn't get him interviewed fast enough so yeah but guess who gets to baptize him... me. i'm way nervous about it again too not about doing it anymore but that i won't get him down hes about 6'4" so hes a pretty tall guy so it should be fun. wish me luck. but hes doing great and everything is working out for him. other then that nothing really else is happening. i'm on exchanges with the zone leaders today so that they could do the interview its been fun. not alot else has been happening we've been trying to find more people to teach but haven't been to sucessful yet but we are hoping this week will be a good week. zach's game sounds like so much fun! i wish i could have been there to see that. you should take some video of him down there and send it to me. i hope everybody is doing well in school its really nice not having to worry about that but i guess i have alot of other stuff that i have to worry about now too. i will send some picutres next week of the lewi's kids baptism and also princes this weekend. then i will be sending my memory card home next week. hows dad doing with retirement? he loving every second of it? how did testimony meeting go? anything cool and exciting happening back home? well lets see thats about it i'll talk to you guys next week on monday my usual time so yeah have a good week pray for the edmond area please! love y'all
elder downs

August 30, 2010-Email

2010-09-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

hey how are y'all doing?
well i'm doing really good. we had a really good day yesterday well it was a really good day but i was scared out of my mind the whole day which was really good when your stuck in church all day. but we had the baptisms of the lewis kids the 3 kids that we have been teaching of a recent convert! it went really good but the reason i was nervous is i had to baptized and confirm one of them the youngest and smallest. so the whole day was just building up the suspense till at 6 when we had the service. it was really good though and but i had a kind of dumb blonde moment that i went down into the font and i was so nervous that i forgot to hold on to the handrail and almost slipped and fell but i caught myself so no worries but i got her down in one try and then gave the holy ghost. it was awesome and really not as bad as i thought it would be. but i forgot my camera cord so i can't send the pictures to you but i will next week for sure along with them on my memory card so yeah. other then that our week has been really good we had 3 baptisms 27 lessons and we talked to 117 people too. i thought it was an awesome week and this next week should be just as good we have scheduled prince to be baptized this saturday or sunday so hopefully that goes through but he didn't come to church this last week or the baptism so hopefully he still wants too i think he does but i think he just had to work but we have a lesson with him on wednesday right after transfers so yeah it should go well. so have i stalled long enough about transfers do you think? well the big news is that i'mmm leavi just kidding i'm staying here for another 6 weeks and elder riches is leaving to duncan. i'm getting elder mcgill who is from i think germany but he's american his dad was military so he was on the base. i've been around him before so i know him ok so i'm excited about it i think i'm not sure yet but oh well and other good news is that we are getting a car this next transfer! i'm way happy about that! but we still have to bike a little well i'll probably bike alot still just in case since i don't know whats going to happen the next month! i might have to go down to moore every day for 4 days this month for this leadership training thing so that will eat up alot of the 800 miles. but oh well i don't mind biking to much its not to bad now that its starting to cool off a little bit. in the 90's is better then the 100's. but oh well thats great news about dads retirement! i bet he was jumping off the walls in excitement! i hope all the kids are doing great in school. i will try to get a letter to them this week. i'm going to be busy with district meeting again and now with transfers and stuff i'm even more busy but i will do what i can it might be a short letter so yeah but watch out for it. oh distict meeting went good i guess i basically had to talk for about 30 min on how to ask good questions and stuff but it went pretty good i thought but now i have to do it all over again and do another basically 30 min talk this week so lucky me right? oh well i still have no idea what its going to be on but i will figure it out tonight haha fun fun well i'll let y'all go have a good week i'll let you know about prince this next week be praying for him! love y'all!!!!
elder downs

August 23, 2010-Email

2010-08-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

hey how you doing this week?
i'm not doing to bad its been kind of a stressful week like everyother week. which is really kind of dumb but oh well. umm not much has happened this week just the same old stuff but guess what happened on saturday? i got another flat tire. this time it happened about 2 miles away from the apartment. it sucked then elder riches got one the next day i guess it was a really slow leaker. so we both ended up with a flat. i think i have bad luck i didn't get one the 3 months i was in the city but i have gotten two in 4 weeks. i think its really ridiculous. we have a baptism coming up this week end for 3 kids of a recent convert. it will be this sunday so i'm really excited about that. so we have a busy week trying to scrabble to get everything ready for that. i got the pictures of charles. that was awesome to see you guys with him. he is so funny i wish i was still down there to see him. but oh well i'll see him agian sometime hopefully. oh i also have to plan out a huge district meeting and do a baptism interview this week. i can't believe its almost transfers too. next week is transfers. i wonder what will happen i think its up in the air i am pretty sure that i'm staying but you never know what will happen. i think that elder riches will leave and go somewhere else and it would probably be for the better. oh i have my memory card i will be sending it home this week but it doesn't have any news pictures on it from this area i haven't taken any yet so i will send some when i do. umm lets see thats about it for this week i can't believe dad retires this week! thats so crazy it seams like it was yesterday that i was he had a year left haha and its still really hot here i can't believe it i thought it would cool down by now but no its still plugging along. yeah i got the package the carmel corn was really good its all gone. lets see i have no idea what i want for my birthday maybe just some money or something. actually i need a new belt that would be awesome. i'll think about it and let you know. i really need a new suit though i'm getting tired of the massive one i have to wear. i'll take a picture and send it with my memory card. well thats about it for this week i have to get going talk to y'all later. good luck with school everybody let me know how it goes. sorry i don't have time to write to everybody i'm so busy this last couple of weeks.
love y'all
elder downs

August 16, 2010-Email

2010-08-18T17:27:00.000-07:00

how's everybody doing today? i'm doing ok not to bad now. we have had a major heat wave this last week well lets see its been about the last 3 weeks so yeah its sucked majorly. i think the worst day was saturday. it was 107 with probably a heat index of like 112. we were out all day in it we probably biked 30+ miles with no success nobody was home when we went to try them which was a big let down for as hot as it was and how much we biked. did i mention we went up 3 of the biggest hills in the oklahoma city area i don't see how thats a good thing for us to be out in that kind of heat and riding up massive hills. but oh well... i survived just barely. so this last week was way fun we had zone conference which was really cool we got the first lesson for us to be better teachers its all about our purpose and how it relates to the doctorine of christ... so basically we are focusing more on baptism. so now we have been told that we need to set firm batismal dates with everybody on the first lesson. which is a big shocker we have done that and haven't seen much success but we did get another baptismal date for in october for an investigator but other then that thats all we have gotten we have 18 dates though in our zone which is huge because thats about how many get baptized each month in the entire mission so thats awesome. so zone conference was really fun then after that i went on exchanges with the zone leaders up to guthrie which is like 30 min north of edmond. that was a blast it was fun to work with somebody that has that much passion and is wanting to work really hard but have lots of fun. and it was nice to have a truck for a while haha. we did that and then i came back the next day and had some hot normal days then friday i went on exchanges with the other elders in our district. it was way hot and fun till about half way through the day. when we were riding down a side walk and i saw a nectorine on the ground so i thought i would jump it and then i decided not to then last second i did but i didn't get my back tire up my foot slipped a little and my handle bars went crazy and then it ended up with me going over the handle bars and slidding about 3 or 4 feet on the cement into some dirt. yeah so i had my first crash and it hurt pretty bad it wasn't to much fun the worst part of the whole thing is that i landed on my shoulder and my backpack so my shoulder hurts but the worst thing is that i landed on a water bottle so it broke and spilt all over the ground which i wouldn't have cared but i landed into some dirt so my shirt got way muddy. i'm doing good i'm still sore on my right side and have a good little rasberry on my arm from it. sadly enough my shirt is trashed so i'm down 3 shirts now so i might need some more some time and the ones i have now are getting pretty gross so yeah. but that kind of ruined the day and we were about 6 miles away from the apartment so it was a nice relaxing ride home with no water. but other then that, thats all thats happended this week. we are almost done with the transfer only 2 weeks left pretty much which is crazy it feels like i just go here yesterday. but thats cool about charles i wish i could have been there to see it. thats way cool that dad got to be apart of it. haha and he noticed you guys right off. i was sad to leave ardmore he was suppose to cook me up some rattle snake but we never got the chance to. oh i had a first this morning. i had eggs benidict. or however you spell it. the guy that picks us up to do laundry at his house cooks us breakfast and thats what he cooked today it was really good. but i haven't had that much breakfast in a long time so i'm super stuffed. its getting pretty close till dad retires i bet he is super excited! hows everybody else doing i've gotten letters from a few people sorry i haven't written back i have been super busy i don't have time to do anything, but oh well this last two weeks have been crazy and i have a feeling that this next week will be the same. well thats all i got for this week y'all have a good week and be good!
elder downs

August 10, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-08-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

hey everybody,
hey hows it going this week. yeah my week has been long and hot as it has been the last weeks. about the same as the last few weeks. it suppose to be super hot this next week everyday over a hundred. but hopefully it wont be too bad. lets see this last week we taught alot of lessons and talked to a bunch of people but our investigator pool is still very slim. we were able to set a baptism date for the 3 kids that we are teaching. they will hopefully get baptized the end of this month and the other guy hopefully the next month some time. so its been really exciting for us to have that but after they get baptized thats about all our prospects so it will be sliming down. this week should be fun we have zone conference tomorrow in stillwater so that should be fun then i'm going on exchanges with the zone leaders in guthrie on wednesday. so its nice i don't have to worry about district meeting this week which is a big relief off my shoulders. but they changed it alot so that will be interesting next week when i have to plan it all out. other then that everything is going about the same not much different. we are still biking around 20-25 miles a day which is crazy here with the heat and hills but its what we have to do. they told us the earliest we will get a car back would be in october which of course will be when its pretty cool outside. its quite ridiculous i think but oh well and the elder that wrecked the car is in a car right now. but this transfer is going by really fast its basically half way over already which is crazy. the two churches is killing me i'm so close to falling asleep in the second one but i guess its better then having to go out and bike all day. lets see thats about it i guess. yeah i will send some pictures and will try to send my memory card this week. today i think that we willl be playing soccer i guess or i don't know whatever haha i just go with the flow right now and don't really care to much. well lets see um thats realy cool about charles tell him i say hi and good luck! wish i could have been there to see it. i bet dad is so ready for work to be over only like 15 days left thats awesome! tell him i'm jelous! lets see heres some pictures from my last few days in ardmore. well thats it for me have a good week talk to you next week. love y'all
elder downs
p.s. this is me and elder staggs

August 3, 2010-Email

2010-08-05T17:06:00.001-07:00

hello yet again,
hey how are you'll doing this week? i'm doing ok trying not to collapse in the massive heat wave this week. its been super super hot! in the mid 100's lately which is way to hot i think and with the humidity it just makes everything worse. this week was spent mostly tracting we talked to over 130 people not seeing much success. but we do have 4 people that are going to get baptized soon. one is a guy from gahna and 3 kids from a recent convert. they all are doing good and are getting ready but other then that we don't have anybody else that is close at all. so once these guys get baptized this area will slow down alot! i had a first this last week though. i had my first flat tire. i found it yesterday morning on my back tire. but luckily i guess you could say we had an extra bike in our apartment. and i didn't have to walk all the way down to the bike shop thats like 4 miles away. but the only bad part is that the bike is made for i think a 12 year old. so if watching me ride a bike isn't funny enough then yeah this must have made people just bust up laughing. it was a long day let me tell you and then the pedals had been broken so i only had half pedals on both sides. so it would just dig in my shoes but oh well i got it fixed and i got some extra thick tubes so hopefully it wont happen for a while. oh did i telly you guys about how we cover two wards? we cover the student ward at uco too so we go to doubel church. we start at 8 for edmond 1st then the student ward starts at 2. so basically we start from 7:30 and go to 5:30... let me tell you staying awake during the second sacrament is one of the hardest things to do especially since its silent in there. i think i was head bobing this last week. it just seams like the longer i'm out the more tired i get. i can almost sit on a couch for 15 min and fall asleep. my companion is elder riches hes a way cool kid from midvale. hes alot like me so its really fun. except for he can't get past the 8 month cap between us so yeah thats still big. yeah i like riding my bike and i kind of wanted to go back on a bike but when your area is as hilly as ours is i would like to have the option of a car. if it was like my area in the south city then i would love it and wouldn't mind it at all but yeah since being here i lost another few pounds so its been good. i haven't really worked out much in the morning since we bike all day but i need to start again but i don't think they have a blender which is dumb. do i need anything ummm.... maybe just a treat box but no chocolate it melts by the time it gets here and is gross. other then that i don't think i need anything else we usually stop at 7-11 to grab a slurpee or something on the way home when its hot so yeah. thats not to far from our apartment. yeah they have a major heat warning this next week to 2 weeks i think yeah we haven't been told anything so we are still going out on bikes all day. hopefully somebody feels bad and invites us in. yeah the apartments are good but since missinoaries have been in ours forever they are really gross and really haven't been taken care of. and they are just kind of cheap ones. i'm doing ok still really stressed out with the new calling but i guess it'll work its self out hopfully. we eat out maybe once a week and thats it mainly just getting drinks at 7-11 or something. but hopefulley we will get our car back soon. i'm hoping within 3 weeks.
well thats about it for this week y'all have a good one
love ya
elder downs

July 27, 2010-Email

2010-07-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

Hey whats going on everybody?
so i am finally here in edmond and its quite a different place. i like it so far but not as much as ardmore. i really miss it down there but i think i will like this place too hopefully. so umm yeah this is the way rich part of our mission. everybody around here calls it hollywood of oklahoma. our area is huge alot bigger then my first area but not as big as ardmore. but the depressing news is that this area use to have a car but the elder before me got t-boned and theres alot of missionaries around the mission that got in accidents so we wont be getting the car back for a while. so we are biking around our huge area! and let me tell you i have never seen so many big hills before in my life and it seams like they are all around were we need to go. we have alot of investigators which is a reallly good thing we are really busy and its a completely different change then it was in ardmore. we have an investigator who is planning on getting baptized in like 3 weeks!!!!! its way cool and 3 kids that are planning on it too so it should be great. district leader is really stressfull. and its just been really a long first week. and it just weird everybody in my district is out at least 6 months longer then me so its really hard. my companion is having a hard time to since i'm district leader and senior over him when he has been out 16 months. he actuallly has only 8months left basically how long i have been out so its been kind of a struggle but he is a really cool kid. i like him alot more then i did elder staggs. my first district meeting when really well i thought the zone leaders said that they were really impressed with it so i guess thats good. oh my companion is from midvale so its way cool. hes pretty tall too like 6 2 so we are a pretty cool companionship. we have sisters in our zone and also another set of elders. they all live about a mile away from each other so its cool to be close to other missionaries for a change. so lets see your questions... a district leader planns out district meeting does baptism interviews makes sure everything is going good in the district takes numbers every sunday night. and thats about it then i go on exchanges with the elders and with the zone leaders once a transfer. so its really kind of stressful. we have a little disgusting apartment. its really gross and small about half the size of our house in ardmore. which is a shock i only have 2 drawers and a small closet so i might be sending some stuff home because i have to much stuff i think. they pretty much have everything here you could think of. i have no idea if we will be able to golf probably not but you never know. its way bigger then ardmore. its a big city there is 3 wards in edmond. i am happy here for now kind of stressed with the whole younger then everybody by alot. i get alot of crap for it. yeah thats about it. i forgot my address so i will write a letter when i get back to my apartment with it in it. lets see i guess thats about it i forgot my camera cord so i will send some pictures next week.... well thats about it for this week i have to go so talk to y'all later... have a good week love y'all
elder downs

July 20, 2010-Email

2010-07-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

hey how are you guys doing today? well i'm doing good but i'm sick... i have a cold, which i don't even know how i could possibly get in this humidity and heat but here i have one. so i feel really drained this last 2 days. but would you like to know whats going on with transfers? ok so here it is i'm leaving ardmore oklahoma... and i'm going to edmond 1st ward. which is just north of Oklahoma city. and i found out some other news to i will be staying senior companion and going district leader there. i'm really nervous about it. i found out that my companion is elder riches and hes been out like 16 months and everybody else in the district will be out longer then me by about a year so that makes me a little nervous. but i guess thats what suppose to happen. i've heard that elder riches is cool so i sure am hoping so. i will be having a car but i wont have to many miles though but hopefully i can get some more when i go there. so transfers are tomorrow in moore so we will be leaving probably about 8 to get up there. but elder staggs is staying here and hes getting an elder that will be interesting. i'm glad i'm leaving for that reason. but when i told the members on sunday they were all sad that i was going and said that i have to come back when i get home. i told them i would. our 2 investigators that we have been working with for like 3 months took it really hard that i'm leaving they said that i should just stay it was funny they told me to come back and visit to so i have lots of people to see down here. umm so thats the big news here not much else has happened down here charles is still planning on going to logan to get baptized. he doesn't know when i gave them your phone number and told them to call and get in contact with you. their names are charles and jeri lewis. so yeah hes planning on going the first week in august and getting baptized half way through! i'll send a picture of staggs and me actually we don't have one together so i will get one. the tomatos plants look huge!!!!! i can't believe how big they are! and it sounds like dad is really trunky! but i would be too. time is flying by i remember when he was excited that it was a year away and now its only like 2 months! jon got a new truck? nope didn't hear that... what kind is it? pictures? yeah i e-mail my family! of course i do! i will send my memory card this next week i've been really busy this last week getting things ready for elder staggs to take over. lets just say he has been here for 3 months and still doesn't know where he is going and doesn't know where half the people live. i'm a little scared to leave the area because of that but i have to so yeah... yeah i'm using my camel bag. we had to bike this last week most of the week to save miles. so we were out in the 110 degree heat biking about 12 miles around ardmore. i'm pretty sure that nobody should have to do that. yeah i drink lots of water thats pretty much all i drink. besides oj but this last week i didn't buy any to save some money and look what happened i got sick : lets see thats about all thats going on here. i'll write when i get to edmond tomorrow to tell you guys my new address! oh i bought a duffle bag for 20 bucks so you know. i have so much stuff i didn't think that i had that much. but i would get rid of some of it but i use all of it! well thats all i got for today. sounds like dad is doing good in the bishopric and had fun at youth conference and will at scout camp. well have a good week talk to you next week and tell you how stressed i am with being district leader!
love y'all Elder Downs

July 13, 2010-Email

2010-07-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

hey how are things back in the good ol' town of bountiful? things are going here. only a week till transfers and i'm excited for that! lets see not much happened this last week. it was kind of a slow week. we kept on trying people but nobody was home or wanted to listen. it seams like a trend lately thats going on here. its getting kind of annoying but we have 3 investigators that are progressing so thats good. one of them charles is the one thats getting baptized some time in august when he goes on vacation to logan. i'll get the info for next week and let you know so you can give him a call when he comes to try to go to it. it should be really cool. the other ones are a couple that we found tracting. they are pretty interested it seams like they agree with everything that we have taught them so far. which is cool. they both have been studying in the book of mormom before we come over and like it alot. the only problem is that they don't want to come to church yet so thats about the only problem i see besides that he smokes but he wants to quit so thats cool. but other then that all we do is tract it seems like. i think that i've pretty much tracted every street in ardmore pretty much if not 90% of them. we have still been doing alot of service around here yesterday we mowed a lawn of someone we tracting into a week or 2 before but it was almost a foot and a half tall. so that took a long time but we are also helping the member that we usually go over on p-days with his house. we just helped him put a lawn in and now this week i believe we are going to help him paint inside. which will be fun. oh my talk haha... it went really well i think that everybody enjoyed it. i knew that elder staggs and the other speaker where probably going to hit member missionary work hard so i talked about why i came out and what i've learned in my 7 months being out. then i talked about my favorite missionary in the book of mormom, ammom. of course i had to start with him cutting off all the arms of the lamanites. then i tied it into member missinoary work at the end. then i read a story. and that was about it. i was going to read a story in the scriptures that i though was way funny and was really appropriate. when jesus says to paul i believe to feed his sheep 3 times. i was going to say that there are to meanings of that to me. to take care of everybody around us and spread the gospel and the second one being feed the missionaries. we are the sheep too. and he commanded him 3 times to feed us! haha but i ran out of time i actually went over a little bit so i didn't get a chance to do it. but everybody was so surprised when i said it was my first talk since my farewell but all in all it was really good. how are things going back home in the ward. how is bro buckley doing as bishop? i bet he would make a good one. hows dad doing? busy still? how many days left to you retire now? haha how are all the baseball games you guys going to? i bet there way fun! i haven't bought a bag yet i will if i get transfered but i'm waiting till transfer calls on monday. yeah i bought some fruit and we got some from members so yeah. umm i haven't taken any pictures lately so i'll send some new ones next week. sweet almonds! i'm excited. no i don't need anything i'm doing great. just pray for lonnie and lynda that they will want to come to church. and that everything goes well with charles lewis. so thats all i got for this week let me know if you need anything talk to you later! have a good week
love y'allelder downs

July 6, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-07-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

hey everybody how are you doing today? i'm doing pretty good. its been an interesting week. we have made two trips up to norman which is 160 miles away. the first one to meet president taylor and have an hour meeting with him. then we drove back and then again yesterday for interviews. which i thought both of these were a waste of miles for us to just go up for an hour each time. but yeah it was good though we got to know him pretty good. and they have made some interesting changes already not just here but worldwide. for example they are now only doing zone conferences once every 4 months and interviews once every 4 months. they now will do every other month will have a leadership training for the ap's zl's dl's and trainers. it will be four days. then everymonth they can have a meeting with anybody they want. like a zone a district all the elders the sisters or whatever. so thats big news. they are kind of also switching the mtc around instead of doing what we were taught. to hasten the work they are doing a 8 lesson thing to teach us how to be better teachers. so that is the new thing that we will be being taught over this next year then in a year from now that is when all the new elders from the mtc will be taught that. so thats alot of new news. so zone conference wont be till november i believe i don't exactly remember when. president taylor is a pretty cool guy i like him alot more then president gee already. he doesn't scare me everytime i see him which i think is good. and he is really relaxed. it was pretty funny in my interview he was talkikng about how his oldest son went to viewmont and played football so it was cool. he is from up by eaglewood so i doubt if you would know him i didn't at all. but he seams less strict then president gee so it should be good. lets see umm thats about what happened this last week. our 4th weekend was kind of boring but not to bad i guess. we had exchanges till saturday afternoon then we went to a 4th ward party had some food then we had to go. then sunday we went over to a family in the ward that was having a grilled chicken cook off so that was cool and that was about it. we just went and tried to teach and preach and do what missionaries do but it wasn't to successfull since everybody was out of town. so other then that we are doing good. only 2 weeks left of the transfer basically. the shed looks good. dad and jake did a good job with it. and the door looks 100 times better then the last one. and dad just because you are luring in the birds doesn't mean that they want to live there haha i got the box of junk food and the money... my companion was really happy to see the stuff. and the funny thing was i bought like 30 otter pops the day i got the package with another 10 in it so i have tons now. tell dad the big motivators for going on a mission for me was the change in my life, to help somebody else and not have to worry about me for a while, and that nobody regrets going on a mission everybody regrets not going. yeah i will do the big show when i get home that will be fun! i'll send a picture this week when i get to the other library. and thats about it. have a good week let me know if i can help in any way! love y'all!

love elder downs or ups as the members call me

June 29, 2010-Email

2010-07-05T17:36:00.000-07:00

hello hows it going today?mine has been good so far. its been kind of a stressful week. we don't have really anybody to teach so we have been tracting basically nonstop but nobody wants to listen so its just getting a little frustrating especially in the 100 degree heat. but oh well. we had an interesting lesson yesterday that was kind of frustrating too. its crazy how hard satan will work so that people won't want to put down there guard on anything other then what they already believe. one of my biggest pet peeves is people who don't think that we need a prophet now. that just doesn't make sense in my mind at all but yeah we are working hard to try and know what to say to her the next time we go over. sounds like you guys had a good week and weekend. fun fun. you doing anything fun for the 4th of july? a way rich family here is having a big party on the 3rd with pretty much anything you can think of. so we are going to that mainly for the free brisket haha can't pass that up! but we will maybe break the ice with the members even more so that we get fed more then once or twice a week. we are going tomorrow for an hour meeting with president taylor. it should be good and of course we are stopping at wendys. it should be an interesting week and then we have zone conference next week. umm let see thats about whats going on this week. oh yeah so my investigator that wants to be baptized in logan would you guys go to it? it'll be sometime in the middle of august. i think that would be way cool. yeah we have ac in our apartment but it doesn't work. i have it set on 50 degrees and it won't go below 80. it doesn't matter what its set on but it won't go below that so its way annoying. nope i didn't get the 4th money when did you send it? nope i haven't gained any weight back at all. i did at the very start but then i started working out then i dropped another 5 pounds but now i'm leveling off till we get paid so that i can get some healthy food again. but yeah me and elder staggs run almost everynight about 2 miles or 20 minutes so that helps out alot. we are hoping to go to the ymca here and see if we can get a pass to go workout in the mornings. we heard of missinoaries a little while back who went and did service there for like an hour or two and got a free pass so we are hoping to be able to do that. that would be awesome! yes i am surviving in the heat just barely. i'm pretty sure that men weren't suppose to wear black slacks in this kind of heat/humidity but we are doing good. i always have water with me so no worries and occasionally somebody will give us some water and invite us in because they feel bad for us. well thats about it. we are halfway through the transfer! well thats all i got today! have a great day! talk to you later!
love y'allelder downs

June 22, 2010-Email

2010-06-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

hey whats up?i'm doing good today hot but i'm doing good. lets see nothing really happened this last week beside the usual stuff except for we were able to meet with the golden contact that wants to get baptized. and i guess that he wants to get baptized when he goes to logan in august. which i think will happen he is ready for it and says he wants to be a member. he also wants to go and serve a mission as a senior couple really soon so thats really cool. hes a really cool guy too. he used to box so he is pretty big and strong but a really good guy. the only bad thing about this is he lives like 40 miles away from us. and since we have limited miles we can't go out there. maybe once a month but not more then that so thats the only bad thing. but i guess he says that we have to come at least one more time he is going to cook us some catfish and some rattlesnake which i think sounds really good! but yeah that the big news around here not much else. all we have been doing is tracting. not very many people to teach out here in ardmore. but we are hoping to change that. and we are getting a new mission president next week. he comes in on the 29th. we are going up the 30th to meet him. which i think is a waste of time and a waste of miles because we are only meeting with him for like an hour to say hi and so he can see us and we can see him. then we have zone conference either the week after or the week after that. and its just going to be our zone so i won't get to see much anybody else since everybody i know is in different zones now. and yeah president gee meets with him for 3 hours and tells him about some stuff and then thats it he leaves and never comes back. he actually came down here to say goodbye. which was pretty cool and he complimented on how clean our apartment was since i cleaned it the day before. but that was the last time we will see him. oh and i have to speak for the first time in church on the 11th of july. for 10 min. so it wont be bad at all. maybe that will get members feeding us and having them give us people to teach. our dinner calender has been having issues the last couple of weeks only like 2 or 3 people sign up this week only 1 did then we went and told a few members and they said: man that sucks so we will feed you. oh well i'll surivive i guess. lets see your questions.... yes i will write to you. i have been busy the last few weeks. i write everyweek and e-mail and an letter when i can. transfers are like july 20 or something like that 5 weeks away! we are getting along ok. hopefully this transfer goes by fast!yeah i got my coat and it fits great! you can buy 3 litters of dr. pepper or one gallon of milk. thats just crazy so i have had to go back to pizzas and burritos this last week. but oh well next month is going to be a good month. yeah i've been working out each day. i ran 2 miles the other night i am hoping with the new mission president they will let us go and get a pass to a gym. that would be awesome president gee said that we can't which is no fun. do i need anything umm not that i can think of. if i think of anything i'll let you guys know. oh happy fathers day dad. i didn't even know it was fathers day till saturday night when somebody told us that it was. so sorry i didn't get you a card. hows work by the way? still loving every second? hows tate doing? he looks like he is doing great and that the kids are having really fun with. yeah michael e-mailed me that he was moving. which is cool. hopefully he can survive in a small town haha. but what i want to know what happened to all that work we put into that apartment. oh well i guess. well thats about it for this week. i'll try to write today i can't garentee anything. so have a good day. love y'all later skater
elder downs.

June 15, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-06-17T16:18:00.000-07:00

heres some more pictures of the temple... a tank which is way cool and of what we went and watched kite surfing

hello everybodyhow are you doing today? good? oh Good? well lets see this week was kind of a really really slow weeks for us. we ended up doing a few hours of service everyday which ended up being more then we thought that we would have done haha which always seams the case. lets see monday we mowed a lawn in the morning then went and helped for 4 hours at the soup kitchen which was a cool experience. lets see oh yeah something else happened when we were there a fight almost broke out which was interesting but the guy left and everything calmed down. then wednesday we went and mowed our lawn then thurdsay was a full day of fun then friday we helped take down a trampoline which was fun. then on saturday we went to help someone move and guess what we were the only ones there so we ended up doing everything then the first counselor in the bishop ric came and helped but she had alot of stuff including a piano :[ that was fun that took till about 2 then we got a call that somebody else is moving in and needed help and that nobody was there to help out at all. so we got the blessing of going and helping somebody else move for another 4 hours and lifting another piano. i can't believe that nobody even showed up if it wasan't for us they would haven't have had any help at all. so that was our week full of service. so that was so much fun. so our lessons suffered this week majorly. but that usually means that this week is going to be an awesome week. but something cool happened this last sunday. we had stake conference but they had an apostle come and speak. elder nelson came. it was really cool. usually that means that its going to be a split or new stake presidency but he just came and talked. it was a pretty good talk but he mainly focused on teaching children about christ and just taking the index where it talks about chirst and doing that for a family home evening. but it was interesting he had some random person come up and speak for 2-3 min which was cool. but then he had all the primary children stand up and sing i am a child of god. that was really cool. i guess if your an apostle you can do stuff like that haha. lets see um thats about it for this last week. lets see yeah i got the spadel. i use it all the time i cook alot of frozen chicken and i smear it all over that. i'm good for a little while on it. yes i will send pictures i only had 45 min to e-mail last week so thats why i didn't. yeah i got the pictures of tate hawks. hes way cute. and looks like a chunk! thats funny about hailey saying that he needs to be older and play with her haha. hows he doing these days? crazy to think about he will be almost 2 when i get home! i got my memory card and i will send it back when i can probably this or next week. we have a special zone conference to see the new mission president i think the 29th then a normal one in july. i have no idea where anybody is so its weird i might not get to see to many people since it will just be our zone. we heard that too. but we got rain for maybe an hour or so and then it stopped. not much but a good amount. i heard that there was some flash flooding up there which is not good but yeah we are fine down here in the middle of nowhere. we are in the mid 80's already and its almost 12 but it feels like its about 100 with the humidity. i will try to go golfing but can't garrentee anything. i'll try to write this week i have alot of people to write back so i'll try to make time. have fun up in idaho and everywhere else your going this week. i bet dad is loving conducting hahaha i just picture it. i'm sure hes donig awesome in his new suits and green tie. green ties are pretty much awesome so i'm glad he got one. and he only has 5 weeks left thats not to bad then he can relax. tell everybody hi from me! talk to you next week or later today not sure

LOVEELDER DOWNS

June 8, 2010-Email

2010-06-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hello once again...hows everything going today? so another week has gone by and before i knew it... it was my 6 month mark. it was fun we went and got chinse and everything and burned a tie. it was quite a fun night. so since wendesday is transfers we got calls yesterday night and the big news is...................... i'm staying here for another 6 weeks and my companion will be............ elder staggs again. so we are staying together another 6 weeks. so this will be a differenet experience for me. staying together longer then 6 weeks will be differenet and hopefully i don't strangle him before then. you know the saying you can do anything for 6 weeks well thats true but 12 weeks is definetly pushing it! anyway.... this last week was kind of a rough week for us and i don't know what it is but it seams like we can teach about 20 first lessons a week off of tracting but as soon as we try to go back and visit for a follow up visit they are never home or anything. its really kind of annoying. but anyway we taught another 15 lessons this last week not our best but with a holiday one of the days thats way good. we still were able to get over 120 contacts so yeah we were working hard still but yeah it wasn't paying off. but then something happened yesterday. we got a call from a member and she said that she knew somebody that we could teach so i'm like sweet! so we go and talk with them and i guess its a part member family and she is a member but he isn't. i guess he has been studying out the book of mormon and our church for about 10 years and he says that he is ready to get baptized. WOW!!! hes like i feel like this is what i need to do. i want peace and happiness in my life and i know that this is the only way i can do that. so thats a miracle right there!!!! that never happens ever!!!!!!! the only bad part well i guess its a good thing is that he says he wants his brother in law to baptize him which is good but he lives in lehi utah. so that will be rough not even going to the baptism. but i guess y'all could go to and tell me what its like and meet him. hes a really cool guy and i guess he wants to get baptized the first part of august... thats when hes visiting utah. i guess our long hours of stress, nonstop tracting, and hard work is paying off we are truly blessed and we were able to find 2 people who i think will progress alot in the upcoming week. we are a little late today and i only have about 2 more min till we have to go to lunch. then we are going to lake murray bout 5 miles away to watch a member that we usually hang out with go kite surfing. so we are going to go sit on the beach and watch for a little bit. no worries were not going swimming we are just going kite surfing so we wont even touch the water :) haha just kidding we are just going to watch for a little while since theres not much to do. well i'll be back on the e-mail a little later today so yeah but thats basically all thats happened. it really is super hot here. i'm pretty much dying everyday i'm really glad that i'm in a car if not i probably would have killed over some time. i'm pretty sure nobody is suppose to be outside in this kind of heat. we are trying not to have to tract during the afternoon but that doesn't really seam to be working but yeah don't worry i am drinking lots of water and people are getting alot nicer as we go door to door. most of them are like you guys are really devoted man i would not be caught dead doing that in this heat and they usually give us some water or something. well thats all i got i'll e-mail some pictures later on in the day when i'm back on again. but for now thats it haha :)
have a great day!great week
elder downs

June 1, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-06-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

heres more pictures
one of thakerville
and 2 of the many cool stuff on the casino wall

Hello...another week has gone by and the transfer is over next week! which i am looking forward to but sadly enough i think that i will be still having the same companion. president gee told me in interviews this last week that i will probably be still having him down here. which means it might be a long 6 weeks. yeah your all probably laughing and mom was right i can don anything for 6 weeks but 12 is pushing it! lets see this week we had a temple conference which was way cool! i really enjoyed it. it was a really long day of driving though which wasn't so much fun but oh well. we had to get up at 5:30 to get ready and be up there 9:30. it was about a 2 1/2 hour drive. then we had a little zone conference then went to the temple for a session then had lunch then had another 30 min meeting then we were sent off. for another 3 hour drive because we hit traffic on the way out. so that was way fun. but don't worry i was able to stop at wendys on the way back which made the drive worth it. lets see it was a weird feeling it was my last interview with president gee and last zone conference. president taylor comes in on the 28th he told us and then we get to meet him on the 29th or 30th. which should be interesting with him being a lawyer and everything things might change alot which is sad. i got some cool pictures of me and the temple and of the temple. its way small. lets see i would compare it to the size of a gym except a little wider. but its a really beautiful temple. what do you think? i also took some pictures of some other cool stuff this last week. we went to the veterens center where they have some cool old tanks and stuff then we went to pretty much the very edge of our area yesterday to the border of texas. since we had nothing to do all day and the tracting for 2 hours before talking with only 7 people we needed a break so i said lets drive down to thackerville and see whats down there and tract and see the casino. its where 5 or 6 members work. its the 3rd biggest in the world so its HUGE! but around the outside they had like different things like big ben from london the coliseum the Renaissance and a bunch of other stuff. its way cool to see. lets see our numbers this week weren't very good. it seamed like everybody we tried to see was not home. all of our lessons pretty much came from tracting which was rough. and yes its getting really hot. its in the high 90's lately and really humid. i don't know if i will survive this summer! but yesterday for the holiday we tried a bunch of people i think about 12 all within about 45 min. so we tracted for about 2 hours only talking with 7 people so then we drove down to thackerville then tracted the 4 or 5 houses we saw there then drove back tracted for another hour talked to 2 people then had dinner at applebees. one of the members works there so she bought us dinner then after that we tracted more and talked to another 4 or 5 people. i'm prettty sure missionary work is worthless on holidays like that. nobody will answer or want to talk. we saw about 1000 people with boats going to go boating and i was so jealous. especially in the heat. but anyway thats was our week long and stressful. but over. the picture of the birdhouses was funny i really liked that. but as you can tell they still like mine more then dads. the frozen spider we left in there for a day or two then we were going to put a string on it and see if we could make it go around on a string but we got bored and busy so we just threw it out but it was completely frozen. did you like the video of us breaking in to our house? so i was thinking that i should just switch weather you can take this heat and i will trade for the cold. well thats it for today i'm signing off for now. hope you enjoy the pictures. talk to you next week with news about transfers.

later skaterELDER DOWNS

May 25, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-05-26T17:06:00.001-07:00

hey whats going on?so wow i can't believe that picture of the snow! thats so crazy! i can't believe that its still cold enough to snow there. its almost hitting 100 degrees here. when we go tracting i'm pretty much sweating just standing there talking to people. its quite a weird feeling and its not the hottest its going to get this summer. i sure can't wait for that when its like 120 or something. lets see yeah its temple conference tomorrow!!!! i'm way excited except for they switched it so its just our zone. so i won't get to see anybody pretty much. i'm a little depressed about that but oh well i will probably see them at transfers in 2 weeks anyway. lets see you wanted to know more about the tornado thing. it happened i think like 2 weeks ago or a week ago monday something like that. it went off about 6 o'clock in the evening. we got a call from president gee saying that you might get a warning but just to stay close to home. so we did then they started to go off so we went back home because whos going to want to listen when there sirens going off? but lets see we came back and then we stayed inside for a little bit then our neighbors asked if we had a shelter or anything and were like nope, and there like well we got tons of room so come over if you need to. so we decieded to go out there and talk with our neighbors for a while. but yeah we basically just stood outside of it for about 30 or 40 min i think watching the clouds twist and almost form tornadoes. then they stopped so we went back in to our house then another siren went off about an hour after and so we went back outside and watched it but nothing happened around us. pretty much we just got lots of rain and a little wind. so thats what happened. we were suppose to have another warning last week but it didn't hit us at all so no worries. it was cool we met some of our other neighbors and they are all pretty cool. they are all now friendly when we see them. lets see anyway this last week was good we taught over 20 lessons which was cool. we have been using this new tracting method that the ap's showed us a few weeks ago and its helping out alot. we just start teaching them at the door instead of giving them a choice to listen or not to. and because of that we are giving on average 2 book of mormons out a day sometimes more then 4 which is was good. we got 90 contacts so yeah. we really don't have any good investigators anymore. the one that we were going to set um a date with doesn't want to talk to us anymore i don't think and is moving somewhere so thats a bummer. but we are getting alot of new investigators and i think that 2 of them will progress really well so i'm excited about that. thats about it. hows the new calling dad? you enjoying playing with the podium? when do you have to go back to work? soon? how you feeling? healed yet? oh i have branson a b-day card that i think that he will love. i'm sending it out today... well tomorrow. but he will get it soon! I think that they will all love it. what did he get for his b-day? i saw the monster truck cake thats awesome! i got my 3 shirts yesterday but not the jacket yet. well lets see i''l try to write a letter if i have some time. well thats it for me this week have a good week talk to you next week!

love y'allelder downs

May 18, 2010-Email

2010-05-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody! hows your week going so far? mine has been way good! this week has been an amazing week for us down here. we taught alot of people and talked to alot of people. its been interesting trying a new way of tracting. we just go right into teaching somebody even if they don't really want to listen... most people like to talk anyway and if you start talking about christ and when he was here then they get into the conversation. instead of saying that we have a message to share about christ would you be interested. its worked really well this last week we were able to teach 25 lessons thats more then i have ever taught down here in ardmore. and we still talked to 100 people. so we were really busy this last week. and we were able to give about 3 or 4 book of mormons away every day. thats way cool and we have gotten 2 new investigators this last week. i guess everybody has been doing this in the mission and we are getting alot more lessons and investigators! lets see the weather down here has been back to normal pretty much. it was really overcast this last week and on friday i thought it was going to flood the whole earth. it started raining in the middle of the night and it was still raining way hard till about 4 in the afternoon then it finally stopped. it was crazy i have never seen it rain so much. most of the streets were flooded with about 6 inches of water. haha it made driving really fun. sounds like dad is enjoying being in the bishop ric :) he'll do awesome! Jaycee's headstone looks amazing! how are things going back in utah... you still cold and snowy? its back up to the high 80's here. lets see zone conference is next Wednesday. it will be a fun drive up there i'm guessing i have no idea how to get there once we get past oklahoma city i have no idea where i'm at so it'll be fun. we have our last interviews this week with president gee then he leaves next month. its going to be weird having a new president here. yeah i'm going to stop at wendys on the way back from zone conference. it should be a great ride home. lets see i haven't sent my memory card yet i will today or tomorrow. i haven't gotten a suit sized yet but i tried on some pants and the 40's fit so yeah but i don't think that i want a new suit till the end of summer i've decided. i have also been looking around for a rain jacket. a really lite one. and i haven't found one. they had one at jc pennys and it was to small and to expensive so it worked out good. so keep an eye out for that i ended up wearing my big winter coat and i was sweating in it so yeah. transfers are the 9th of june which is only like 3 weeks away not to long from now. yes i love my mother. i will send pictures in a little while i forgot my camera at the house so i will in a few hours. hows jerilyn doing? and tate? whats his middle name? let me know how it goes and send some pictures or something. lets see i don't think that theres to much damage down here its mainly up in norman. a few missionaries get to go up and help on that but we didn't. and is dad have a countdown chain yet in his shop? only 3 months left! wow its almost here are you guys going to throw a big party... i'm sure you can hit the early bird special somewhere! :) haha. well thats about it for me today. not much is happening new so yeah. so i'll let all of you go have a good week! talk to you later!
love y'all elder downs

May 11, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-05-13T17:27:00.001-07:00

HELLO...
hey everybody how are you doing? so since i talked to everybody pretty much on sunday this e-mail will be short. its been a good week so far this last week. we talked to 126 people which is really good. we went on 2 exchanges also. on with the ap's and one with the district leader. since president gee is leaving soon he wants the ap's to go on exchanges with everybody so they came down for 2 hours and worked. then we did our usual once a month exchange with the district leader which was fun. thats pretty much it haha besides what i've already told you on sunday so yeah. we are hoping to set a date with one of our investigators this upcoming week. we were going to this last sunday but she left early so we are going to this next week.
lets see ok so as you can tell by me e-mailing you that i'm fine and that the tornadoes didn't affect us. lets see it was pretty cool though last night we had 2 tornadoes that kind of were on opposite sides of us one about 20 miles south and one about 25 miles north west. so no worries here in ardmore. i hope brian got to mcalister alright. all we got in ardmore were some heavy winds and alot of rain and some cool looking clouds. a couple tried to form but nothing happened. i got some cool videos of them well elder staggs did my memory card is full. lets see thats about all the news around here nothing to much going on now... elder staggs says hi. oh yeah brian came down yesterday and we had dinner at a cool bbq place. he got down here around 3:30 and then we had dinner then we had to go so it was a cool time. i got a picture with him which i bet thrilled him haha but it was good to see him agian and to talk to them. i also got to call ash and brans. and talked with them for a few minutes. it was fun. how did the lawns turn out this week? good thing michael is there and loves to do yard work. and hows it going with you being the first counselor? i bet your going to love every moment of it and now you wont be home even more and spend even more time at the church. well thats about all i got for today i'll write if i have some time today but i don't think i will we are having dinner with a recent convert then teaching his girlfriend so we will be pretty busy tonight so yeah have a good week enjoy it!
love y'all
ELDER DOWNS

May 4, 2010-Email

2010-05-07T08:36:00.000-07:00

hey hows it going everybody?
so this week has been iteresting. we had transfers this week and elder lewis left me and i got elder staggs. hes from virginia and has been out 11 months. i also found out that this transfer that i am senior companion. which is funny cuz i'm over an elder thats been out 11 months and i've only been out 5. i'm also driver of a nice small red corrolla which is way funny haha. it was way weird driving again i hadn't in 5 months i think. but its nice. lets see mothers day is coming up which will be nice i don't think that i will be doing much but calling home and i think that i will call around 6 your time. it'll be cool to talk to everybody. lets see umm we were able to get 100 contacts this last week and 15 lessons which was way cool especially after transfers. but this week we are looking for a good week too. no investigartors came this last week which was depressing. we have had at least one show up every week before. we aren't close to any baptizms yet but i think in the future charla... one of our investigator will get baptized i think. umm sadly we didn't get to go golfing this last week. the family had something that they needed to do so we just had dinner then we had to go. but it was a good dinner. navajo tacos. me and elder staggs are doing alright. hes from a completely different background with not liking sports and stuff so its been a fun few days but i think it'll turn out to be ok. but i've found that he isn't a very clean person. he doesn't do dishes or stuff so its been a struggle and he doesn't work out so i've lost a work out partner but oh well its only 6 weeks. lets see questions...
i got a picture for you for mothers day.
we have no dinner tonight so i will probably be cooking some chicken and make a wrap or something.
i bet dad is enjoying the time off. i would if i were him. hows the lawn doing? haha wish you had a riding mower? haha i do :)
well lets see anything else you want to know umm i'll take more pictures for you. thats about all i got for this e-mail. i'll talk to you in a few days so you can ask anything you want then.
well have a good week talk to you guys on sunday
love you bye!
elder downs

April 27, 2010-Email

2010-04-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

Hey Good Morning Everybody Well I Guess Its Good Afternoon...
Hows your week been? mine was way fun. so since i know you really want to know about transfers i'll tell you. guess where i'm going...... guess..... nowhere haha thats right i'm staying and elder lewis is going back to the south of oklahoma city. my new companion's name is elder staggs i think thats how you spell it. i guess hes been out for a while but yeah it should be fun i hope. i was really sad when elder lewis said that he was going to leave. we both wanted to stay together for another transfer but oh well. i guess this is for the best. so i will be getting a new companion tomorrow morning about 10 o'clock in moore oklahoma then we have a 2 hour drive to ardmore. but i'm thinking about stopping off at a wendys on the way home. oh i forgot to tell you me and elder lewis stopped at wendys 2 weeks ago on the way back from zone conf. that ended my streak of like 150 days of no wendys.
so i'm glad to hear that dad is doing very splended. sounds like everything went according to plan. its just a big blur to him thats funny. thats how it was when i got my wisdom teeth out. i didn't remember very much of it. so how movies have you watched dad? you gone through every router workshop season? haha :) wow and you get 6 weeks off! wow thats forever you won't want to go back. how many days till you retire? has the countdown begun Yet? i bet your way excited for that day.so hows the weather there? its just getting hotter and hotter here. except for today. today there is a cold wind so its a little different but if it wasn't for that it would be about 80. i have a feeling its going to be a hot summer. so this last week was a good week for the whole mission i guess. president gee sent out an e-mail congratulating everybody. i guess the whole mission taught 1100 lessons, with like 140 new investigators. thats way cool!!! he said that is the most that has ever been taught or new investigators since he has been here. it was also a good week for me and elder lewis. we taught 20 lessons talked with 103 people about the gospel. that was a good way to end i think. we wanted to get 200 contacts but my back started to hurt and so did elder lewis'. so we weren't able to get that much but we got our goal of 100 contacts. lets see last week was a fun p-day. i got to go to a steak house and have all you can eat ribs. and salad bar and rolls. it was so much food. i of course ate to much. but they were amazing ribs haha but not as good as moms i don't think. they didn't pull off the bone sadly. umm yes and we are going golfing again today! hopefully i do better this time then last time. i think that i will hopefully. haha jealous jeremiah? michael? haha and its free! and we are going to have navajo tacos tonight for dinner which is going to be awesome. lets see and i think that i might be driver which will be way cool! but i will be driving a little toyota corrolla oh well i'm looking forward to it. lets see thats not good to hear about ashton. at leat they caught it early that can be way bad if you don't. you'll have to tell him that i say hes jimmy baboo and so is everybody else. and no rush on the shirts i have tons now i don't really need them till it startes getting really hot and i'm on a bike. Well tell everybody hi for me. oh how did neils farewell go? did i tell you shaun got his call he is goint to phonix arizona, and skyler is going to ummm let see he is going well i can't remember but somewhere that speaks spanish. i'll tell you in the letter i write. oh how did chris' wedding go did you hear at all? thats weird to think that he is married now . well thats all i got for today. have a good week
love yall
elder downs

April 20,2010-Email & Pics

2010-04-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

hello wow this week has gone by so fast. i can't believe it. first off the important things. golfing was so much fun. they made an agreement with the member and he wants us to go down every other pday to golf and have dinner! i really hope i stay now! thats going to be so much fun. this last week i didn't do very good at all. probably the worst i have done in years which is not good but hopefull it will be better this next week. transfers are next week which is so crazy but i have a feelin that i will be here for a few transfers and i want to be so yeah but you never know. still send letters to the mission office just in case. i got both of yours and dads letters at the same time i think. i'm not sure which one got in the box first but i'm guessing it was a tie. i got the letter about the surgery. i wont worry about it if its just minor. hope everything goes smoothly with it. let me know if anything ges wrong. nope i haven't found the doll meseum. but there is one in the library that i go to so i took some pictures with that. i got my camelbak this last friday at zone conference. i love it. i use it as a backpack to which is way nice theres tons of room too. yeah thats fine you can get the same shirts that i have. ummm i'm not sure when i can call yet on mothers day depends on when we have free minutes. it will be either whenever i want to or have to be after 7 or 6. yes i bought fruit with the money. i have been buying fruit before you told me to buy it. just so you know. thats funny about jocelyn. i took some pictures of the fridge where i have there big pictures. then above my desk i have bransons foot and hand and ashtons elk. i also have hailey and zachs on the wall. i took pictures of them so when i send home my memory card you can see it. tell them i say hi and that they all are jimmy baboos. thats crazy about chris i didn't think that he would ever get married but looks like i was wrong thats cool though. i havent gotten a hair cut yet but i will before transfers sometime. lets see what fun stuff did we do this week? we mowed 2 lawns this week that wasn't ours. one of them being right after a big rain storm which was way fun haha but it looks good. we finishe knocking on the trailer park this week. i still can't believe how many people live in those like over 160 trailers which is crazy. i can't belive it. and some of the cars that they drive. i guess thats more important then where you live... which makes no sense to me at all. we saw a mercades and a brand new corvette in there. yeah oh well not my choice. we got a few potenitial investigators out of it so it was a good use of time. i've heard that you have to have the chance to hear the gospel like a dozen times before you are a little receptive to it so i guess thats one down for those guys. i have a few pictures. one of me golfing this last week and i think a few other ones i'm not sure what ones that i have. i'll send home my memory card after this transfer when i get some time and am by the post office. i might need some money to send home some stuff. i bought an iron gym this week so that i can have a pull up bar when elder lewis leaves. which i'm not sure if he will or not i'm hopping that he doesn't. but if he does stay he doesn't want to drive the car anymore so i will probably be moved to driver which will be fun! haha. president told him that he could go either way. he could stay or get moved so you never know. he has i think 2 or 3 older brothers and a younger sister. he loved golfing and he was the one that said we should do it again soon. so thats cool. well lets see thats about all i can think of for this e-mail. i'll write a letter when i can today. can you believe its mothers day already? it feels like i just talked to you a month ago. hope all is well let me know if i can do anything.

love yall elder downs

April 13, 2010-Email

2010-04-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

hello everybody hows it going?
lets see so this week has been fun well we had an amazing week. we taught 23 lessons and talked to over a 100 people. it was awesome we worked way hard and we were blessed. we have lately been tracting in a massive trailer park. its been an interesting experience. we have met some really interesting people that have some crazy views on everything or no views at all and are fine with that. but its been fun they haven't been tracted out in over a year so its been good to talk with them and see hows things are going for them. this week has been good so far. we taught 5 lessons yesterday got 25 contacts and mowed our yard. it was a very productive day. we also ate at a cool chinse place. it was just like the one from back home, empire. it was really good and tasted just like it. even the same signs and menu which was way cool.
lets see to answer your questions i write anybody who writes to me. i figure if they spend time to write me i will too so yeah. i don't really care you can write me as much as you want. its up to you. my bike is in the shed that is outside our house. our house #1 i think it was. with all the leave bags in front. the white one. if you look in the back yard there is a random peice of cement in the middle thats ours. and the shed that is next to it is where they keep the riding lawn mower and we put our bikes in there. yes i measured my sleeves they are 11 inches at the top i drew you a picture so that you don't get it confused where i measured it. so there it is. hope you liked the picture. we have mowed twice already its going to have to be done once a week i think so yeah but its not to bad with the riding lawn mower it would take forever if we didn't have one. yes i am happy. do you think that i am not? music lessons are good. i'm learning slowly i can play part of one song and almost all of another. its way hard to play the guitar but its way fun. we go to church here in ardmore its a ward. its name is ardmore. the bishop is bishop newell. he is awesome. i guess he use to be a filmer for the church so he did all of the churh movies and stuff even the temple ones which is way cool. our church is at 10-1. we usually have meetings starting at 8 so thats what time we go. after church its like every other day. if we need to see people we do if nothing we go tracting. we usually have dinner sometime so thats what we do. i hope you liked the pictures i really don't have to many more but i'll see what i can find. hope everything is going good back in bountiful. its like 82 degrees right now and very humid. its not so much fun. but today is going to be awesome we are going golfing! at 4 so it will be a great day. haha its been so long i hope i can still golf haha well thats all i got for this email. if you want to know anything i will be on again in a little bit just for like half an hour but yeah have a good day i sent you a letter today. later skater

love
elder downs

April 6, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-04-07T17:29:00.000-07:00

to whom it may concern:
yeah i didn't have time to write this last week i figured that a e-mail would work good enough. so yeah this week has been fun with conference and everything else going on. we tracted alot this last week and were able to get 3 new investigators which was way cool. we have both been working really hard and i think that its paying off. the guy that we are helping quit smoking and chewing tabacco is doing pretty good he has had 2 relapses but he said that he doesn't want to smoke anymore which is a good sign and he says that it tastes horrible now. the program that we teach is really cool. but he has alot of motivation to quit he wants to get his patriartical blessing and then make it to the temple. we are like thats some of the greatest motivation that he could have. he was at the priesthood session and both sessions on sunday which was good i think that he liked them alot. i enjoyed them alot too but i realized its really hard to stay awake at them when its really dark in the chapel. oh yeah we just went to our church and there was like 2 other people there so not many people came. its broadcast on tv here too which is cool so not many people wanted to leave there house. but i learned something cool too did you know that there is always one apostle missing and one seventy missing? they are in the old conference center presiding over there. which i did not know and thats cool i think or i think its incase somebody tries to bomb the building or something but yeah thats something new that i learned to answer your questions ok i will watch for my camel bak. and no i didn't get my sleeves mesasured, i didn't get the 20 dollars dad sent me unless it was from last transfer. we tract on average about an hour to an hour and a half everyday. we do alot of service to here so thats fun. we are helping a member finish remodeling a house we raked leaves for like 5 hours this last week at his house. he had a lot of leaves that hadn't been picked up in years. my first week we helped him finish putting the wood down for his floor. like we did with brian's west warren house. that was fun he has alot random corners and edges so its fun to work around those. i love my area here in ardmore its awesome i like the members here too. they are all nice and caring. oh by the way i had some ribs last night which were amazing... and tonight a member is taking us to get all you can eat ribs :) yummy. so i have a request though to help with my diet i would request that nobody sends me and more candy. and if you would like to spoil me send me cash to buy protein or some good food. that would help the most. lets see we cook every once in a while but not often. yes we have a mcdonalds here i'm pretty sure that every town has one in the us. we have a walmart here so we shop there every tuesday.
i don't think that i will have time to write a letter if i do i will but i'm pretty busy today. i'm learning how to play the guitar a little at a members house which is way fun and we are going golfing next tuesday to a course that use to be on the pga :) haha michael. and for free a member is a gm for it. we can play as much as we want with unlimited balls and holes :) jealous?!?! and yes i got my easter box. i'm glad that dad doesn't have to go in for surgery. i have been praying for him every night. let me know when he has too though. what is it for agian? let see that about it for this week. we are teaching and tracting everyday when we can. its way hot around here it was in the mid 80's this last week and with like 70-80% humidity... way hot. well that about it i got to go we have lunch with a member in like 15 min. talk to you next week
love
elder downs

March 30, 2010- Email

2010-04-01T13:27:00.000-07:00

hey hows everything going today? its been another wonderful week here in ardmore. we haven't done to much out of the ordinary its just like my last area if you were wondering tracting and teaching wherever we can. we just have an awesome car right now instead of bikes. lets see you think i got out of yard work???? well guess what we have to do at our house... yard work! but we have a riding lawn mower so its fun. i thought i would get out of it this year but maybe not. yeah it was really hot yesterday in fact it was 81 in ardmore! it was way way hot considering it was 32 last week. and its only going to get hotter here. my companion was saying that it was 113 last summer around here and with like 80-90% humidity. which i hope i have a car for that reason but you never know. i forgot to tell you about our mission conference 2 weeks ago. it was so much fun. elder costa from the seventy came 2 days after transfers. it was a really cool experience he talked alot about faith and confidence. it was an awesome 3 hours. so lets see thats 6 hours with general authorites in the last month and 1/2. how cool is that? me and elder lewis are getting along great. oh did you get our brackets? haha pretty bad i would say! wouldn't you? oh so i have had my worst meal on the mission so far... and it wasn't that it was like weird stuff its just it was all put together and we had to eat it. it was from a crazy sister in our ward... but we go over there and she says sorry i didn't mean to give you that much and its a massive amount of mac and cheese with a side of corn beef and cabbage with a side of turkey chunks and a side of some sort of suasage. so you can imagine how that would all taste but just imagine it about 5 times worse it had some really weird cheese on the mac and cheese and it almost made me puke! so i had to mix everything together and eat it really slowly. lucky for elder lewis he got about half the size of a plate then i did... it was funny we both hated every second of it and got out as soon as we could. luckily we had an apointment right after that. but let me tell you it was not my favorite meal. but on sunday we got some amazing steak! and turkey and potatos. we had two meals :) they both made up for that not so favorite meal. but something that i learned this week was that smoking is really hard to quit. we have a recent convert and we are teaching his girlfriend here and they made a pact that if he quit smoking and chewing tobacco then she would read the book of mormon. i don't know how that all came to be and we were there when that happened but yeah that was the promise. so we taught him a stop smoking workshop that uses 15 steps and turns off the wanting of a cig or chew. ( we teach that to whoever wants to quit its way cool) so we taught him that and if you follow the 15 steps everyday for 7 days your a non tobacco user. so its been 3 days since we taught him that and its going ok. he took one or two puffs off one yesterday because it was to big of a temptation since he didn't listen to us and get rid of every pack that he had. but he said that it was so gross that he didn't want to smoke agian. which was cool. but i'm hopeing that it will stick this time. i didn't realize how strong of an addiction that tobacco is. its a big one. but i think that he can beat it. lets see that about it from ardmore this week. oh i'm learning to play the guitar here. i know a little its pretty cool. well that it. tell everybody hi from me! love yall talk to you next week!
ELDER DOWNS
TE AMO!

March 23, 2010-Email

2010-03-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

hey everybody!
whats going on? its been a crazy last week! first me and elder glazier had an amazing day on monday where we taught 10 lessons and talked to 27 people i think. thats the best day i have had these last 3 and 1/2 months. then that night (monday) we got transfer calls. and it was a complete curve ball. everybody in the zone thought that we would stay together for another transfer and stay in the city. but that wasn't the case. i got told that i was going to go to ardmore oklahoma. in fact thats where elder glazier came from before he was with me. and the funny thing is that elder cannon the one that replaced me was here in ardmore. and its been swithcing back and forth. even elder lewis was in the spanish branch in the city so it seams like that they just keep switching them from south okc to ardmore! haha anyway so ardmore is way cool i like it here. we had a good last p-day in the city which was full of golden Carrol. i think thats how you spell it. then we went and played volleyball with everybody. it was alot of fun. then i started packing which was quite the event! haha with me only having two suit cases and all the stuff that people have sent to me it was a tight fit to put it in. but i barley got it all in and got really lucky. transfers where last wednesday. everybody meets in moore, ok. which is like the center of the mission i guess and switched companions and went back to the new area. well the funny thing that happened is that elder cannon kept the cell phone thats suppose to stay in ardmore so we had to go up and get it from him. so that took most of the day then we had a two hour drive down to ardmore. which is alot of fun. haha but we have our own car. a red toyota carrolla. its alot nicer then my bike let me tell you! haha our area is huge so we get alot of miles about 1200 miles a month. and i got an upgrade. from a small gross apartment to a medium size house about the size of the one michelle rented in hooper i think. its way nice! and lots of room. i also have a nice desk which i'm excited about! i didn't ever use my other one i just used the table. i didn't recieve my brackets yet so i guess that means that i'm out of the running. oh well i still would like to fill one out to see how i would have done. i love the area and the ward. i like it alot bettter then my last one actually. i'm a little sad to leave the investigators there. i hope everything is going well but i think i'm suppose to be here right now and help the people here in ardmore so that makes up for it i guess. yeah i get along with my new companion. his name is elder lewis. he is from Minnesota. which is funny because i thought that every elder was from around the utah area. this is the first one that i know of that hasn't been. he like sports and loves to sing. he is way funny and its a fun time so far. we have everything around here but a WENDYS!!!!!!!! that makes me kind of mad! i haven't had wendys in lets see 111 days!!! (i'm keeping track) but we have everything else. we have a taco bell about 50 yards from our house... hahahaha which is really nice! we went there once already. we eat out a little but mainly if members take us. which they do pretty good. but yeah if you will send me gift cards or anything make it for taco bell or burger king or subway... i like subway now. yeah don't laugh. there is not missionaries around us. so p-days here are kind of boring well not really its a nice relaxing day. the people in our district are about an hour drive away. so we have to drive an hour to get to district meeting every friday. of course i brought my electric blanket. thats the only one that i have so i had to take it. i don't know exactly where we live yet but its right next to the freeway basically i think of the south east part of town. i haven't measured my sleeves yet i will i just forget i will this week.
my address is
1210 10th avenue nw
ardmore, ok
73401
you can see where i'm at on the map. we cover most of the the cities around us so its a huge area! lets see thats about it for this e-mail not very long but thats about all i can think of to say. elder lewis says hi.

tell everybody hi from me! and that they are jimmy baboo!
love yall
elder downs

March 16, 2010-Email

2010-03-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

to whom this may concern or affect:

haha thanks for the scoop on march madness. we aren't suppose to go on other websites so i have to wait for the sheet to come to me so that i can fill it out and send it back. did you get my memory card? i sent it this last week it should be there this week some time. i didn't send a letter with it sorry but it was kind of a spur of the moment thing and i didn't have time. its from the last month or so. its been a fun transfer i can't believe it went by so fast! and the new one starts tomorrow basically! its so crazy! thats cool that byu is playing here. do you think that they will beat flordia? i don't think so but thats just me i have no idea if they are doing good or not this year its a little frustrating and stuff but its only for two years where i will be in the dark. i only have one more to go! lets see ummm oh yeah transfers should i drag it out longer or should i tell you now? ok i will tell you and be nice well we got transfer calls last night at about 9 at night so it was kind of eating at me all day and i didn't know if i would stay or not but it didnt' really affect our day. oh yeah our day i have to tell you about that first. we had an amazing day! probably the best day so far on my mission. last week was really slow and rought nobody was home and no body answered the door but yesterday we broke the bad streak. we taught 10 lessons yesterday!!!!!!!!!! it was amazing! we taught 3 off of tracting and 3 other ones that we had set appointments with. then we taught 2 active members and 2 less active members and we got 2 new investigators and got 23 contacts in the process! we only got 15 lessons last week we almost got that in one day how crazy is that? we did meet some ineresting people yesterday too. really nice people but some really interesting people too! lets see oh yeah we also got stuck at a pizza place for about 2 hours too. we went with a member and since two of our appointments fell through he took us to a pizza buffet. cici's pizza and we got there and he locked the keys in the car and he and his family only have one car so they couldn't find the keys first and second they couldn't get them to us. we were about 3 miles away from his apartment. so we had to call and get another member pick us up and drop us off at our apartment. so it wasn't too bad but i we left our backpacks in the car so we were without our scriptures for about half of our lessons. so it was difficult trying to find scriptures when you don't have them marked. and it felt really weird going around with out it. but we were able to get them back last night at about 9 so it wasn't too bad. ok so back to transfers. so guess what???? i'm leaving! i'm going to a place called ardmore. its where elder glazier was before he came here. its in the south east part of the mission. and i will be getting a car!!! so no more biking for me. i'm going down there with a really cool elder. i've heard nothing but good about him so it should be way fun! his name is elder jeff lewis. but the funny thing is that the area that i will be covering in the car is bigger then the zone that i am in right now. its pretty crazy. i have to drive an hour every friday to go to district meeting. haha but i will be touching haydens mission! which would be funny if he is up there touching mine! so yeah i leave tomorrow morning! at about 10. so goodbye city! its kind of really sad becasue i don't want to leave some of the investigators here and some of the members. its sad... abu is going to get baptized soon. he was suppose to start his job yesterday. and ronnie was close as soon as he stoped coffee and drinking and chewing tabacco. he already gave up drinking so the other two we were going to start with him next week with a workshop that garentees that he will stop in a week! so its way close with him well i hope so and there are a couple of othere ones that will be hard to leave. but i guess i'm suppose to! so yeah thats where i'm going you can see it on the map on my blog. and i will be living in a house too not an apartment! just the two of us. so its going to be nice to have that room. the only problem is packing i have gotten alot of suff sent to me and things so its going to be interesting packing it all in two suit cases. but i think i can do it. it will take some creative packing. haha. lets see well that its for this week i only have an hour since i'm at the library. occc is closed for spring break. to answer questions
no i didn't measure my sleeve.
got my package loved it except for its not the right muffins!
i got the cd from somebody
shoes are ok now that i will be in a car. i will take a picture haha its pretty funny.
no i only stay in the apartment till on on thursdays becuase of weekley planning. every other day we are out by the latest of 10:30 besides fridays which is district meeting in the mornings
have a great week! i'll talk to you next week!
love elder downs

March 9, 2010-Email

2010-03-13T10:13:00.001-08:00

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
hey hows it going? another week has flown by and i can't believe it! its going by way fast. march is already 1/4 of the way over and it feels like it should still be the start of February. lets see this has been a fun week. nothing really new has happened really. um we went about it like every other week and were able to get 18 lessons again this week alot off of tracting which is really good. we got 3 off of one street. which i have never had happen before. i think i had 2 once or twice so that was a really good day. the weather is ever so constantly changing which funny and annoying too. it was 63 this week so we didn't have to wear our jackets one day then it was so cold the next day that we had to wear coats. haha we had a massive rain storm all day yesterday. we were riding around in it which was way fun but we both got soaked! i got some videos of me riding through some puddles around our apartment since i already was soaked it seamed like a good idea at the time and was pretty fun. oh by the way i'm sending home my memory card this week so don't worry its coming soon. oh cool a package coming my way soon! that will be great! you can't find any more great value muffins? they don't exist here for some reason. you would be so proud of me this last week i made some brownies that were the best ones i have ever had in my life! haha cooked to perfection if i do say so myself. but other then that i have been having my usual tortinos pizza or sandwiches or burritos. oh i had a first this week i had my first romon noodle thing. it was pretty good i think i might go buy some more next week. i didn't mind it at all and its not a bad meal for only 15 cents! how are things going this week so far? have you had selection sunday yet? it feels so weird it feels like it was just time for the super bowl and then the olympics and then they were over now its march madness already thats way crazy. so i better be getting one out to me so that i can beat kylie this year. i have absolutly no idea whats going on worse then kylie so i should win this year right? i got my hair cut yesterday! its way nice now and i don't have to worry about it blowing in the wind or getting messed up in my helmet. elder glazier cut it for me so it looks pretty much amazing for free haha. let see what else is there oh yeah i went bowling today right after studies at 10 the ap's and about 8 other missionaries went to. it was a blast we bowled 3 games and it was only 6.50 and thats including shoe rental how crazy is that? yeah but guess what i bowled? i bowled a 132! but i got smoked out of the water elder reed bowled a 180 which was amazing he striked out the last frame which i have never seen done before! so since of that and nobody going to play volleyball today we aren't going to play... so its a really relaxing day we don't have anything to do till 6:00 then we have to go and teach some potential investigators. hopefully get one lesson tonight. that would be great. lets see oh yeah so you'll have to tell me where neal goes and where josh smoot goes. thats funny about jake. they have had a few people have to get there galbladders out this last month here. and thank you for getting hayden's address i can finally write him ahah. lets see i have a card for zach but i'm going to mail it off on thursday. just so you know. i haven't mesured my sleeve yet it hasn't come across my mind at all till right now. i get transfer calls on monday so thats when i know if i'm staying or going and whatnot. i have a feeling that me and elder glazier will stay here for another transfer. sure a cookie mix would be awesome some choco chip ones. and brownies would be way good. and some more of the licorice that i like. lets see oh yeah so i spent some money on my debit card. i bought a cd... phantom of the opera. i didn't have any other money so i had to use that just so you know. i still would like the 300 soundtrack. i can just go and buy it if you don't want to look. ok well thats about it for this weeks e-mail. have to go and e-mail other poeple.
have a great week! love yall
eLder downs

March 2, 2010-Email and Pics

2010-03-05T16:12:00.000-08:00

cool pictures!
me and elder glazier!
funny picture of me and a bumper sticker
and us at golden corral eating a big thing of ice cream.

hello everybody,
wow what a fast week agian. i say that every week but its just getting faster and faster and faster. really crazy. TODAY IS MY 3 MONTH MARK!!!!!!! HOOORAY wow its been the fastest 3 months. umm lets see this week nothing to big to report. we did alot of tracting this last week and were able to talk to 109 people which is really good since we taugh 20 lessons. we are starting off really good thins week with 23 contacts and 3 lessons already so hopefully it will turn out to be an amazing week. i can't believe this transfer is almost over it feels like it just started. wow!! but i have a feeling that me and elder glazier will stay here another transfer together. ummm hows playing with ash and brans? and hows the rest of the grandkids? they are all jimmy baboo...and crazy and silly. update on abu... he went in yesterday to see about his job we are going to call him tonight to see how it went. if he gets it he will be baptized this month if not then we have to wait till he gets another job so he doesn't have to work on sundays. he is very passionte about the scriptures and coming to church. we asked him about how he can prepare himself for church and he said that he is not going to do anything that will distract him saturday night through sunday night. he is just going to study and even turn off his phone and tv. WOW! so we are hoping he gets it!!! he is awesome! other investigators. ronnie the other older guy that we are teaching we taught him the word of wisdom yesterday and it went pretty good. he doesn't want to give up coffee or chew but he said that he will work on it. he is now quiting drinking which is really good he's been off a month and hopefully for the rest of his life. but we just have to convince him that he needs to start on the other addictions too. so thats our worry and struggle with him but he is doing good. has lots of questions so its fun to sit down with him. we were there for 2 hours yesterday oops we didn't even know it hahah. then we had to bike 5 miles up to the upper edge of our area to see a refferal. which was interesting. we got there and she lives in the projects. its like a mile south of the south part of the city. we get there and all she wanted to get was the movie not the message we shared so she just sat there and just shock her head. so it was kind of depressing going 10 miles for that hopefully we planted a seed that will grow sometime. oh and i think i set a reccord in the mission. last week on thursday i think i set the reccord for the most dogs to chase you in a day. i got chased by 8 yes i said 8 dogs!!!!! yeah it was all within about an hour to. it was like we turn a corner more dogs to chase me. it was a rough day and it was really windy that day so it was hard to bike away from them going up hill... lets see what else happened interesting this week. its back in the 40's again after being in the 20's last week. i'm so sick of it changeing constantly.
yes i like the shirts i have now. i would be happy with more. maybe if you can get some that wouldn't be so think. my short sleeve ones are really thick. yeah i could do that but that takes to much effort buying hamburger and then doing that and its expensive too. but i will one of these days. TRANSFERS ARE THE 17th!!!!!! i don't need anything right now. maybe more juice things and more muffins. the ones that are one with the blue. those are the ones i can't find out here. yeah i'm happy. i'm doing great.
hows everything going with the family? president gee told me about jaycee... it was hard and sad to hear it. but he told me to keep going and gave me a hug. he still says that he has alot of faith and confidence with me and elder glazier here. well thats about it for this week. i'm not sending a letter this week because i wrote everybody else this week. so i didn't have much time. and i have to have time for volleyball. :) haha well have a great week. hope all is well.
love yall
elder downs

Promised Pictures

2010-02-23T13:31:00.001-08:00

heres some pictures from this last week. one of a hippie bus thats just awesome! haha and me in normal clothes. i haven't worn jeans in probably 2 months! and the last one is of me and my mtc friends that came out with me. that was yesterday at lunch where we had spaghetti with weird noodles. i will get the elder bednar as soon as possible! enjoy these!

Feb. 23, 2010-Email

2010-02-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

hello everybody!!
wow another week has gone by! can't believe it! February is almost over! and it feels like it just started just a few days ago! it feels like I've been e-mailing home almost everyday! so yeah if this is a little short i apologize. lets see this week. nothing really much happened this week. besides the normal 4-6 or more miles biking everyday to get to appointments or dinner. yeah so you know how i don't like lasagna... did i tell you i've had it i think lets see......... 4 times since i've been out here and that doesn't include spaghetti which i think i have had about 6 or 7 times. and alot of other things that i didn't really want to eat but oh well see i will eat everything. for me and my cooking the most i have cooked would be eggs... pancakes... and grilled cheese. oh wait i cooked some cookies and am giong to cook some brownies this week. oh and i cook the muffins which isn't bad at all and yes its the one package of the great value i like. they don't have those at our walmart i looked for like 10 min. but yeah my usual eating consists of the tortinos pizza or the frozzen burritos. which is really cheap and easy. haha i'm glad they have those hear or i would be having so issues. um lets see we go to members about 3 or 4 times a week on a good week. this last week we only had 2 which is sad because we had the entire week filled up... people just cancel on us. which is kind of annoying but oh well. you asked some of my favorite people here... i would have to say brother erickson is probably my favorite. he is in the 1st counslor in the bishopric and is divorced but is just awesome. hes been like everywhere. and michael guess what he has.... his own plane. he uses it all the time well when he can. he lives about 200 yards away from our apartment complex so its really easy to get there. he feeds us a few times a month so its was cool. lets see who else. oh yes i would have to say sis stephens and her husband walter. he isn't a member but they are so funny. we go over there every other monday for dinner. walter is this i would say about 5'6" inch man who probably weighs about 120 and has huge glasses and i would consider him as a nerd. but he is a huge football fan. like through and through. more then anybody else i have ever heard of. its so funny to see him talk about things. he drove us to help somebody move a couple weeks ago and i would say that was the funnies 15 min. he gets so mad at everybody it just makes you laugh. and sis stephens is way awesome too. she is a really good cook in fact we were there last night and guess what we had.... lasagna. she cooked the stouphers kind or however you spell it. and anybody else i can think of oh yes the hernandez brothers. they are both in the ward and are both married. they are both are halirous. they are hispanic looking but they have can't speak spanish even though they try too haha which is funnty to see them try. but yeah rodney hernadez's son is on a mission right now too and guess where he is... ogden he is an AP and theres another guy in our ward, OKC 2nd... thats there too. its was funny we just switch elders. but yeah those are my favorites here i definetly will have to keep track of brother erickson though. he is somebody that i would definetly come back to see and the other ones too. umm lets see what else should i say oh yeah elder bednar. he came this last weekend for a fireside for the stakes around us and us on sunday night. it was way cool it was just a big question and answer period. which is way cool. they asked some pretty good questions i'm not suppose to tell you about them but they were way cool answers. then we went to a misson conference with every missionary in our mission. it was so cool and it was basically a big group discussion for 3 hours. it was a great experenice. he is so normal you wouldnj't believe it. he was cracking jokes and everything. haha its one of those things were you think that they know every single thing but they don't just like us. its like the notion before i got here was that missionaries konw everything which i can tell you is far from the truth. but yeah at the end everybody went up and shock his hand! which was awesome. i stopped and talked with him for a second. i aksed about my friend brandon bednar who is his nephew by the way. he i guess got his mission call to tokyo japan! how cool would that be? it was pretty funny to see him like oh really you know him! but it was so intimidating talking with him haha i didn't get to ask him any questions. every time i got one to ask someone either asked him or he moved on to another subject. but he really hit hard on faith is an action. you have to act before something will happen like with joseph smith. it was so cool to listen to him answer questions and know exactly where the answer is in the scriptures. i wish i knew them that well! haha hopefully one day. then we got a zone picture with him which hopefully they will send to us cuz i want it. but yeah i will send it home when i get it. well thats about all i got for this week. oh yeah your questions i don't want any short sleave shirts quite yet. i'm fine with the stuff i have for right now till it gets way hot so hold off on those. yes i use my electric blanket i've used the heating thing 3 or 4 times its way nice. yes i got my package! thanks for all the goodies and everything. except for the face stuff leaked but it wasn't too bad so its fine. no i haven't seen a camel bag. we don't go to stores at all. if i'm lucky once a week. and sometimes not even that. so find one if you can. that will be good for me in the summer and will last me my whole mission and then some. but make sure i can get my scriptures in it. march 17th is transfers not to long away which is crazy. so yeah stop sending letters to my address the week before. i haven't been back to the flee market yet but i will find our some prices and stuff when i go next which hopefully will be soon. yeah they got your letters yesterday. i gave it to elder glazier who just laughed and elder romero who was jumping for joy it was awesome. oh cool yeah i would love that. and when your looking if you find a cheap copy of the phantom of the opera soundtrack that would be awesome too. but not big rush or worries. well i better be going i have to go play volleyball not to long from now. and i can't miss that. so question. me and elder glazier where discussing this this morning. but all the people that acendded into heaven enoch, elijah, and then the people who are still on the earth like the three nephites and john the revelator. will they ever die? because it says that in 3 nephi 28 that they shall never taste death but don't you have to die to be reserructed? ok let me know what you think or know. i will study it out and ask some people so i'll tell you next week
well have a good week! talk to you next week
love elder downs

Feb. 23, 2010-Email from Sister Gee (Mission President's wife)

2010-02-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Parents and Families,

We had a wonderful day today as we had our first ever all-mission conference with each missionary in attendance at the same meeting. So here is what happened: President Gee and I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with Elder Bednar. We visited about how things are progressing in the world with the spread of the gospel. It is more than exciting to get the big picture from one who travels all over the world. It is assuring to know that the leaders are confident that as long as we keep the commandments things will turn out all right. While we were chatting missionaries were traveling from all over the mission to be ready and in their seats when Elder Bednar arrived. Some of them had a very early start on this cloudy and cold day. (At least there was no snow or ice.)
When we arrived there was complete order. Elder Olsen was playing the prelude music. Everyone was quietly studying. They were dressed perfectly, down to their dark conservative ties. The sisters are always appropriate. I walked into the chapel with a big smile on my face and saw all the missionaries look up, but without big smiles. I think they were too uptight to smile, but they were excited, nonetheless. Most of the Stake Presidents and their wives were in attendance. Elder Searle conducted with dignity. After the a rousing rendition of "Called to Serve" and an invocation Elder Bednar began to speak. It took a few minutes for him to get the missionaries loosened up. He told a little story or two and then got down to business. Today was going to be a participating day. He would invite their responses and questions. The principle he wanted them to learn is that they are better off if they learn to use their agency to act, meaning participate, rather than to be acted upon, meaning sit and listen to him talk. He explained what makes a good question to ask an apostle and what kind would be a waste of time. With the rules set, we were off for three hours of interaction. He started with asking them what stood out to them as they read the talks which were assigned. (You had the chance to print them off last week.) Hands popped up everywhere. There were no empty minutes in this day. One after another they shared things they learned about more meaningful prayer and more powerful faith. Gradually it shifted to evaluation of this format for learning. How could they incorporate this kind of interaction as they teach investigators? Then he opened it up to ask any question they wanted. We ended with his testimony and a blessing for the missionaries.
I know what it means when the scriptures say "it cannot be written the things that were said." It is because the Holy Ghost was the teacher and it is hard to capture that on an e-mail. However a few of the ideas that were discussed are: connecting the dots between being strictly obedient to seemingly trivial rules such as getting up at 6:30 and becoming a covenant people prepared to live Celestial Law; action precedes the power, not power and answers first and then action; listen to the investigators and address their needs, rather than just talking at them; listening carefully for the Holy Ghost to teach them things that were neither asked nor talked about today. (Several testified that their questions had been answered privately while the discussion was going on.) Elder Bednar also taught what it means to be a prophet, a seer, and a revelator. He explained the calling of being a "special witness of Christ to the world." During all this I believe most of us had a renewed confirmation of the authority of an apostle of the Lord. What an unforgettable opportunity we had today to be gathered all in one body to be taught by a prophet, seer, and revelator.
After the meeting ended we took zone pictures with Elder Bednar and then had lunch. Now the missionaries are safely back in their areas and hopefully have a renewed understanding of what it takes to exercise faith and to be guided in this missionary work. I hope you get some details from your missionary when he/she e-mails you today. I hope you will get a few of their personal insights. Have a great week.
Love, Sister Gee (and President Gee)

Feb. 16, 2010-Email

2010-02-16T17:26:00.001-08:00

hey mom and dad.
whats been going on? nothing much here same old stuff. i don't even know what to write about. it feels like i just e-mailed you yesterday. hmmm lets see oh yeah you need to find more muffins. and some more of the juice packets... the big ones that make a pint or something i'm also out of face stuff and i haven't seen any around here at all so if you could send that... that would be so awesome. i haven't had all the popcorn. but i love it i'm good for a while. no i didn't take it to the cleaners for mending i took it to sister gee and she fixed it so its really good. and it looks like brand new but i did find somebody in the ward that can do it so next time i will just ask her to do it. but its nice to have a work suit again i had to wear my good one for a few weeks which got kind of muddy alitte bit but i cleaned it off. so i will send home my memory card home soon either this week or next week or the next week. whenever i get a chance to go the post office. its really close but where so busy going places that i don't have time. lets see we went out with president last week like i said in my letter and he went out again with us last night. we went to see abu again. he is doing great and he still doesn't have his job yet. its really depressing hes getting kind of frustrated by it. but we are praying that he gets it soon because if he does then he will get baptized. he is basically ready all that is holding him back is that. not being about to go to church. so pray for him that he will get his job. well thats about it for this week. we have been working with alot of former investigators we have stopped by alot of them. we got 2 of them to say that we could come back so thats great. but last week was good we were able to teach 19 lessons and talked with 100 new people. which is about what we are suppose to get every week. but this week is going to be good. i just hope that it is going to be good weather. it changes so much down here. its been in the 50's to the 20's to the 30's back to the 40's but now its suppose to go back down i believe. so it just can't make up its mind. hahaha how did you like elder glazier's comments on my last letter haha bet you weren't expecting that! haha but yeah todays letter will probably be short that i'm writing you. we got home way late last night because we went shopping. so i'll write as much as i can but it will be probably the same thing i wrote in this e-mail so forgive me. um lets see what else i loved all the candy that i got haha its all gone. i really like the m&m's also the reeses and kit kats and especaly the licorice or howevery you spell it i can't spell. so maybe more of that in the next package wuold be awesome.
oh so yeah i learned something new this week. did you know that mormon was suppose to be the last book in the book of mormon then he writes more because he finds more ore... so that makes it really meaningful if you read it. read in the last book in mormon and read verses 11-14 these are my new favorite verses becasue it goes through the entire 2nd lesson about the plan of salvation in 4 verses! how cool is that? its way cool! lets see i've been reading in mosiah too this week and its way cool to read about king benjamin who is awesome and abinadi. and how king noah dies by fire to because they got mad at him haha yeah well thats it for this week i'll try and get you a note done today hopefully! haha :) havew a good week! talk to you in a week
love elder downs

Feb.10, 2010-More Pics

2010-02-10T16:53:00.000-08:00

Feb.9, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-02-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

hey mom and everybody.
i don't have to much time today to e-mail we are a little short on time becasue we helped some guys on the side of the road load up a big flat bed of ply wood that feel over i'll send a picture of it it was all on the ground and it took forever to load it up so i don't have much time. thats why this is so late of me e-mailing. but it was good we helped out somebody today.
so my new companion is elder glazier. he is from american fork utah, he likes basketball and stuff but really isn't that good but i'm not either so yeah. he likes to sing he was a chior nerd back home but yeah he is a great missionary. he has been out for about 6 months so not to long which is crazy but he said that i was like a pro missionary when he was here for the first day. um lets see he is short well everybody is compared to me but lets see he is about i would say 6 1 or 2. way skinny too. this week has been kind of crazy. we had a storm again which is crazy because from what everybody around us here has been saying is that they haven't had anything like this in probably 10 or 15 years. so i must have brought it from utah ahah. we are teaching now because our area that got bigger we are teaching a guy named abu yes his name is abu! how cool is that and he is from africa but he is going to get baptized this transfer or the next for sure. so i'm way excited for that. then we got two other investigators that will most likely get bapitzed really soon too. we are actually going to see abu tonight hopefully we can bike there cuz its like 4 miles away from our apartment so it would not be fun to walk. then we have an apoitnment right after him so we are way busy tonight. i enjoyed your package! it made my day so much better expecailly all the candy and stuff. will you send out some more muffin mix? they don't have them here :( so i dont have any more. lets see the things i cook. well depends on the day i've had grilled cheese, then eggs and muffins, but usually i have a tortinos pizza which are really cheap and easy to have. thats about all we cook we get alot of left overs from the ward so we eat alot of that too. umm what else did you want to know? yeah i'm working out or trying to everymorning. i'm buying a jump rope today and going to start doing that every day and dong the jump program which will be awesome. i'm also sliming down quite a bit. i weigh 256 crazy huh? yeah my pants are huge on me now! haha well lets see thats about it for this week sorry i only have a few min. i didn't even get to e-mail everybody this week sorry about that but here is a picture of the wood we loaded up and also a picture of elder glazier and romero my new on is on the left,. you can ask dad which one is left. hahahahahaha
well have a good week i'll talk to you next week!
love you!

elder downs

Feb. 4, 2010-Email & Pics

2010-02-04T16:32:00.000-08:00

hey mom and dad
wow this week has been really rough! it was probably one of the worst weeks out! i've had so many problems come up. i don't really want to go into them at the moment so just wait for my letter. it goes into whats happened and everything. but yeah the weather this week has been crazy. it went from 70 degrees to 12 degrees in 3 days! i couldn't believe it. then we got alot of rain that froze and then snow on top of it. so its been a really slow week that really didn't help with it being a bad week. i got some really cool pictures of me and some of the ice off stuff. which i will send with this which you should have by now. one of them is me as an icile. we went out during the freezing rain storm and thats a picture of my hair frozen. its not wet its frozen! and then the next are of me and pulling ice off stuff! cool huh? and thats me and elder romero with icicles that we pulled off the roof of his apartment. and they look like guns! haha that was like the highlight of the week. but i got exchange calls and i'm staying here for another transfer and my companion is elder glazer. i have heard he is really cool so i hope it works out all good. he comes tomorrow at about noon. so i'm excited and nervous at the same time. but elder jackson is going to somewhere in texas, i don't remember wehere exactly. but elder romero is staying here so it will be fun to be around him again. which will keep me sane probably. i havnen't had a chance to get back to the flee market yet, but its not a cowboy hat or a cowboy belt buckle haha yeah its a cool OU baseball hat and a lucky clover belt buckle that looks pretty cool. haha its cheap and looks way cool so why not? right? haha don't worry i've been pretty good with my money. i need to be a little more careful this month. i had an extra 50 dollars on my msf card from the expense of bags to fly out so i didn't really care how much i spent. but i should be good this week. i never realized how much grocries are! they are way expensive! and it adds up quick. and its really important to buy some we skipped a week because we didn't have any time to go and we regreated it pretty bad. and yeah this week has been pretty crazy we were only able to ride bikes on monday so we walked the rest of the week. but on tuesday we went bowling and guess what i bowled?!?!?........ a 145!! it was awesome best game i have ever bowled in my life! i got some pictures of that too that i will send home with my memory card. it was so much fun you can see me almost fall over while bowling haha but i still lost that game! elder romero bowled the best game of his life and got a 150... he was so lucky he only left two frames open where he didn't get a spare or a strike. so have i told you about how much i miss golfing... we ride past a course almost everyday and i get to look at it well not this week because of the snow it was covered but i have wanted to go. we only can go if a member takes us i guess. i'm not sure if thats true or not. weel i hope all is well with primary sounds like some struggles also. just keep having faith and everything will work out in the end. thats something that i have been trying to have this last week. and hope. i have found that my mission scripture is awesome and it goes hand in hand with d and c 78:18 which is also awesome i've read that so much this last week. you should look it up. well i got to get going. i can't belive its been 2 months already... it is febuary 2nd... and its been 2 months wow time flies by! wouldn't you agree. it feels like i just got here and now its already been a transfer. well have a good week. i'm hoping for a better week also.

love yall
elder taylor downs

Feb. 3, 2010-Pics

2010-02-03T18:21:00.000-08:00