Pictures!

Elder Spencer finally sent us some pictures from the MTC and Tucson!

Elder Spencer and our cousin, Sister Eccles

P Day!

Outside the Provo Temple

Elder Spencer and Elder Watkins (Best friends/neighbors since 1998) at the Provo Temple

November 28, 2010

Estimada Familia,

Thanksgiving was GREAT: )

THANK YOU everyone for the letters:) It was so nice to finally get those pictures of the family from my farewell and I can't wait to get more of the Big Sur trip. Things have been really good (yet a little slow on the tracting side) here in Sahuarita over the holiday week. But we did manage to find a new investigator! I am really growing to love this area. Southern Arizona seems to get prettier by the day-- maybe I'm just getting used to it. It's getting COLD though which was a surprise to me! It rained a little after church yesterday, and it's been getting below freezing at night! Supposedly it might snow up at the ranch this year! We had dinner with a family that said they are going to take Elder Holyoak and I "Jeep-ing" up in the mountains on our next free PDAY, we are really excited! Another member said he wanted to show us all of his guns and take us to the shooting range. Sadly, handling firearms is against the rules.. but we might go and watch anyway.

TODAY was the Sahuarita Zone (from us, down to Nogales) vs. Tucson Zone (my old zone) TURKEY BOWL! It was really fun to see Elders Burns and Barlow and Edmunds and Kinsey and all my buddies form Tucson this morning! They said Daniella was baptized this weekend!!!! Finally!!! I wasn't there for it, but it feels pretty cool to have someone I actually taught get baptized. I am so happy for her. The football game was really intense.. there are a lot of athletes in these two zones.. including Elder Edmunds who will be playing football for BYU, Elder Strong who plays rugby for U of U, and Elder McBride (from Canada) who was an Olympic Luge and Skeleton athlete. It was a pretty rough game. You'd think missionaries would be pretty cautious, we used socks as flags, but we still didn't stop until Elder Blake got his nose split open(he's in my district), another Elder split his eyebrow, and Elder Kinsey got a pretty bad bloody nose when Elder Nordyke (who plays football for Southern Virginia) stiff armed him in the face! The only one stitch worthy was Elder Blake's injury, but luckily he knew someone in his ward who is an EMT or a fireman or something so we went over there and got him glued back together after the game.

It was fun to see all the guys from the Tucson zone, and it felt good to be able to speak a little bit of Spanish with them and Elder Hernandez from Mexico, but I am really happy here in Sahuarita. I am especially grateful for my companion Elder Holyoak. There hasn't been a day so far that I haven't learned something important about life or missionary work from Elder Holyoak. He is such a diligent missionary, even in a really hard area, and is ALWAYS really positive and uplifting. He also happens to be one of the most humble people I have ever met. I am so blessed and I can only hope I am doing SOMETHING for him in return. He keeps on telling me that I'm not going to Mexico til he's done with me, because he needs me here--I don't deserve this kind of praise from him, but I can't make him stop!

ABOUT the Mexican visa

At the MTC they said that I would get my visa in 7 weeks or less. I learned not to trust the people at the travel office in the MTC long ago, but just for kicks, this past weekend was the end of my 7th week here in the ATM. I got a letter from Brittany saying John might be going down to Mexico soon? Does anyone know if that's true? Is John in WA still or back in Utah? or MEXICO? I haven't talked to John since the MTC, but I hope he made it down there!

One of the Border Patrol guys in the ward told me he could go to a lady in Tucson and get me a Mexican Visa TOMORROW if I wanted ha ha. All I know is there is a reason I am in the Arizona Tucson Mission, so I'll stay here til there's a reason for me to be in Mexico.

I love and miss you all so much and appreciate all the letters, emails, and prayers--they are truly answered and felt, I can promise you that. I feel so incredibly blessed and grateful every day for this opportunity I have to be a missionary and have such a great family back home. You are in my prayers.

Scripture of the week: D&C section 78: 17-19

ELDER SPENCER

November 20, 2010

Estimada Familia Mia,

lesson learned:------ don't get too comfortable where you are, because everything can change SO fast.
For whatever reason there was an ET (emergency transfer) in the Gila Valley, SO I, being in a threesome in south Tucson, got a call late (1045-late for a missionary) Wednesday night telling me to get my bags packed, I was moving south to Sahuarita! I threw all my stuff in my bags and by 1 the next day I was down here in my second area. I am serving in a place called green valley, in two English speaking wards here in Sahuarita and I like it a lot more than I thought I would.
When the news came that I was going to an English speaking area I was pretty bummed. My Spanish is probably the thing I am most worried about, so I wasn't excited to go serve somewhere where I wouldn't be using any! But Heavenly father had a lesson to teach me - and that is that the work is the same everywhere, and that for some reason, some really old retired white people need Elder Spencer to bring them the gospel.
My new companion Elder Holyoak is a REALLY nice guy from Pocatello Idaho and we get along really well. He's pretty green still, been out 6 months, but knows the area really well which AMAZES me because I am so lost here in the suburbs. Our area is actually kind of split up, we live in a pretty open rural-esque area between our two tracting areas -- Green Valley, a community of really old people, mostly "snow birds" who come down for the nice weather (you have to be over 55 years old to live there) and Rancho Sahuarita which basically looks like Rancho Cucamunga. There is one more little branch of out area called the McGee Ranch which I can tell is going to be my favorite place to go. We ride our bikes about 20-25 miles a day back and forth from home, to Green Valley and Rancho, Mostly knocking doors(white people are so mean) but we have to drive about half an hour up into the desert to McGee Ranch.
From what I've gathered so far, McGee Ranch is a HUGE plot of land where about 75 families are spread out. You have to be somehow related to the McGee family to live up there, they all work together for what they call "the company" (construction I think) and most all of them go to "the company church" except for the few Mormons who live up there and investigating family that we go and visit. --from what I can tell, the company church seems to be kind of a branch off of Mormonism ha ha they supposedly believe in the book of Mormon, but not that you have to be baptized and they don't live the word of wisdom--. They kind of live the law of consecration too... the company makes money, and gives it out to all the families evenly.
I still know very little, but this place seems CRAZY and I'm really excited to learn more. Oh yeah and they are a bunch of red necks and hunt every weekend. The couple houses that I've been to up there so far have had enormous elk and deer heads and antlers and even bobcat and mountain lion pelts hanging up all over the house . This place is awesome.
All the people who live down at the bottom here in Sahuarita in the suburbs do one of two things: young families, nerdy dad working for Ratheon, OR super HUGE scary dad who works for Border Patrol. One of the members told me 85-90% of the population here fall into those two categories.

Overall, I thought I wouldn't like it here, but I'm actually LOVING it. We have a couple AWESOME investigators and I actually end up using my Spanish about once a day. I miss South Tucson and Elder Burns and Elder Barlow and my tiny Mexican branch, but !asi es la vida! (lit. trans.--> "like this is the life")

I'm pretty excited for thanksgiving, and I'm pretty stoked to be in a gringo English speaking area for the holidays too! I think we got at least 3 or 4 thanksgiving dinner invitations at church yesterday, but I think we're only going to go to two. Church was AWESOME. It's weird to be in two, Glendora 5th size wards after a little struggling branch, but I got a little more out of church -it being in English. I've been thinking a lot about thanksgiving and what a cool holiday it is and I just wanted to say that I'm thankful for my family. I love you all so much and I'm so proud to be a Spencer. I think of all the GREAT memories I have of growing up and I am so grateful for my childhood. How cool is it that I have family on both coasts and a rich history on both sides. I think back to all the cool things we did as a family growing up, driving to new Mexico, flying out to the east coast, getting to see Indian reservations, white sand dunes all the way to civil war battle fields and Washington DC. We've been lucky enough to go to Hawaii, NYC, and that is just vacations! We live in Southern California of all places! Emily has gotten to study in the Mountains and snow and I study by the bay, where I can see the golden gate bridge and San Francisco. We are all healthy, and happy, and together. Thank you Mom and Dad for everything that you've sacrificed and done for this family. I love you all so much and I love the Lord for putting us together. It is no wonder to me that God LOVES and works through families, and I see that every single day, doing his work.

Love and miss you all!

ELDER SPENCER

11/15/2010

Estimada familia mia,

Another week! The first week of this transfer is over already -- crazy. I had my "third birthday" this past week which means I've been out for 3 months! Not bad if you asked me, but Elder burns (16 months) likes to make fun of me. Last night we were riding our bikes on our way home when an airplane flew over head. He yells over to me, "Elder Spender! (a nickname, spawned from a note in which a lady we're teaching misspelled my name) How far away do you think that plane is?" I thought about it... looked at the plane.. tried to figure some elementary geometry, and answered that it had to be less than a mile. He responded. "WRONG! FOREVER! You're never going home!" (ha ha)

This week has been AWESOME. Honestly, nothing very exciting to the ordinary person has happened, but from a missionary point of view, this week ROCKED! We have been SO busy, in missionary lingo, this area is "blowing up." We hardly have enough time during the day to ride our bikes (our "hogs" or "bicas"--pronounced "beekas" or bicis pronounced "beesees" short for bicycleta (not really sure how to spell anything right now)) all over creation to see everyone we need to see, and our nights are even busier (the car is a great asset when we have at least 4 lessons a night!)

tenemos muchos investigadores nuevos como Nick and his mom Lucia who I mentioned last week, and a 16 year old kid named Alex who we met trying to get a hold of his mom (a referral). We ended up running into him twice here at the library, and gave him the first lesson, and now he's reading and praying about the Book of Mormon!

Nick and Lucia are the best investigators I have ever heard of. Nick hasn't smoked meth (you smoke meth right?..) or pot since our first lesson, and has broken it off with his married girlfriend! He told her, "I'm a Mormon now, if you still love me in a few years lets get married." ha ha! He's GREAT and so incredibly willing to change. He is feeling some withdrawals from the drugs:/ but calls us when they get really bad, and is still giving his call to quit drinking coffee and tea! I can't imagine how hard this is for him, but still he is so willing. Everytime we teach his something new, he prays about it, and just does it!

We gave Lucia the infamous "Jehovah" lesson because she asked us about God's name... we shared a couple scriptures with her, talked about the Godhead, the Father(heavenly father), the son (Jesus Christ,nuestro salvador y redentor, aka Jehovah in the scriptures) and the Holy Ghost/Spirit. She was pretty distressed that she had been "praying to the wrong person" for so long!So we assured her that she had been praying to the right person all along! That he hears her prayers and has answered them still, she's just been calling him a different name. Like calling me Steve. She liked that and felt a lot better:) oh and gave us a dozen more tamales, WOOHOO!

Funny Things--

--We went to visit a member family with the zone leaders last night to watch a pirated copy of the Joseph Smith(Jose Smit) movie in Spanish ha ha. I guess the movie hasn't been released to the public yet and Elder Kinsey got it from the "underground missionary black market." Leave it to the Spanish speaking missionaries to get a burned copy.

--We accidentally crashed a family birthday party at one of our investigator's houses and stayed for a little while singing along with Enrique Iglesias. Funny fact--every good Mexican party has loud music and a brinca-brinca (jumping castle)

Sad Things--

--Sheila (a really nice Investigator with three kids and a husband in jail)'s house was broken into and torn up pretty bad:/

Scary things--

--we like to take the mission rule "try not to take the same route every day" to the extreme and go on adventures trying to find new ways to our investigators' houses. This past week we were riding on this dirt road behind a wash when we were seriously attacked by at least 5 really angry really big pit bulls. and they were FAST too! all three of us got away without a scratch but there were some pretty close calls

To answer your questions..

What do we do for food?-- We USUALLY eat at members houses-probably about 75 percent of the time which is AWESOME. AHHHH I love the food it's ridiculous. But we cover/make breakfast and lunch and things for ourselves usually. Thanksgiving, there is a branch party this Thursday, and I think we have at least 2 maybe three thanksgiving feasts booked for el dia de accion de gracias:) so I think we'll be pretty stuffed ha ha

Again, miss and love you all so much, I am healthy and happy even though it is starting to get a little chilly at night haha and yes mom I have sufficient blankets and sheets : )

Esta todo MUY bien. I love the Lord, I love the gospel, I love my calling, and I love my life. may Dios les bendiga.

ELDER SPENCER

Estimada Familia,

It's a new transfer! and the only change is that I am now a "District Monkey." Which only means my companion Elder Burns has been assigned to be District leader! I was concerned that Elder Burns would leave Elder Barlow and I (two still very green missionaries with "iffy" spanish) alone since he's been in Los Reales for two transfers already but he's staying! From what I've heard, I am the only visa-waiter who didn't move, and one of the only one's in a triple companionship still! Maybe this means I'll get to go to Mexico sooner (ha ha) but really, I am SO glad I am staying in this area. I have made great friends with a lot of the recent converts, members, and investigators here. I am extremely short on email time today so I just want to say thank you to everyone who wrote me, mail really does make the day brighter.

ALRIGHT quick miracles

first of all, the fact that all 5 of the elders serving in the los reales branch are staying here. I really believe this is meant to be, because the branch is really kindof falling apart and I KNOW that we can do something to help. SOMEHOW we need to help the members feel the spirit of missionary work, and maybe then they will help up find more people, and hopefully unite within themselves and make friends again.

I only have a couple minutes but earlier this week we randomly ran into this big scary mexican man on the street named Nicolas. He told us he had just gotten out of Prison, and had watched general conference there! His mother is a devout JW, but he really likes the mormons so he would love to read some of the Book of mormon, pray about it, and let us come over and ask him how it went.

WHAT?! Thats what we call golden.

Ends up we went to his house, he WASNT there, but his mom was making tamales and we offered to help. We shared the message of the restoration with her, and gave her a Book of Mormon too and she said she wants to come to church with us on sunday!

We're going to baptize a Jehovah's Witness!!!

We met with Nicolas and his mother last night and it was one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had. We had a very powerful, very moving discussion about how we can follow Jesus Christ in this world today through the restored gospel and by being baptized by the authority of the Priesthood. There are some hairy details about Nicolas' baptismal date, and whether he goes back to prison or not in the next few days but I'll have to update y'all on that next week!

I love and appreciate you all so much. It is so good to hear that everything is going well at home.

again, I love and miss you all and I am doing extremely well:)

Love.

JACK

1st Email from Tucson!

Jack is in serving in Tucson while he waits for his visa. It sounds like he's having a fabulous time!


Hello everyone! I hope everything is going as well at home as it is here. I'm glad you got my letter! I received the one from dad with the wikipedia article on tucson the other day so the mail seems to be working:) I think it's just a little slow for me to receive mail because it has to be forwarded through the mission office then to our apprtment.
Well I don;t really know where to start... but I LOVE the mission field! Already in the first WEEK I have been chased by angry dogs, yelled at by passing cars, rejected at the door, and (beleive it or not) rained on a little! But preaching the gospel to our investigators and the ones we do find is so incredibly worth it all, it's hard not to smile the entire time.

We are teaching some really great families. Daniella has a baptismal date for this upcoming saturday! She's a really nice girl about 20 years old, 4 kids, and has been through a lot in her life. She's found teh gospel as a way to really turn her life around and face the right direction. Her boyfriend figure is in prison (also now reading the Book of Mormon there ha ha) and her kids are the cutest! It helps a lot to practice my spanish with little kids. I like to help her oldest, Luis, w/ his homework -- he's in kendergarden and is REALLY smart. We are teraching a couple other single moms, a really nice family, and a young couple (again maybe a year older than me) with their very young very cute little girl, ALL OF WHOM JUST NEED TO COME TO CHURCH. I have learned quickly that this is kindof suprisingly the hardest part. People will read the book of mormon, they might even pray and get and answer, gain a testimony, want to be baptized, but for whatever reason no one ever comes to church on sunday! It's hard enought to get the members there on time enought to take the sacrement haha.
Anyways enough about them, now my companions. I really do like them a lot.
Elder Burns is hard working and SO GENEROUS. He is ALWAYS baking something for us or for the investigators and he's realllllly good. He makes biscuits and muffins for breakfast or pasta or something if we don;t have a dinner appointment, its GREAT. He also always seems to be fixing my bike for me in his spare time because it keeps breaking (he basically build it from scratch for me when they heard they would be getting a "visa waiter").n Hes really great and really funny -- always singing disney songs and translating them into spanish on the spot. He also really loves the people and the language and is really good at teaching.
Elder Barlow is quiet, awkward, skinny, and about 6'4'' or maybe 5''. He doesn't speak very much spanish but is an inspiration to me because he TRIES so hard and the people really do understand him, and love him for trying. The there are the zone leaders who also are working in the los reales branch (5 missionaries to maybe 20 people in sac meeting is a lot ha ha). Th are really great, Elders Kinsey and Edmundson. Elder Kinsey looks like a Kinsey form the Glendora stake, small, buff, etc. Edlder Ed. is HUGE and has bright red hair and freckles and plays football for BYU! They're both really fun.
alriiight I don't have too much time b/c I want to try and send you some pictures from the MTC but really quick, some funny stories:

I think I mentioned this already maybe. but Elder Burns was test riding my bike while we were tracting one day after fixing it for the nth time and the seat broke off and the seat post ripped his pants haha I felt bad but he just laughed and we kept tracting!

Then another time we were visiting Daniella's grandma, an inactive member and she had locked her keys in her car! she didnt have AAA or anything so we used a coat hanger and a rag and a screw driver and broke into her car hahaha some of the gangster kids on the street helped us do it since we didnt know how. I don;t really want to know why they know how... haha

Then on saturdayyy fue una barbabcoa de la estaca! I think thats how you'd say there was a stake bbq. It was reallllly fun, sadly none of our investigators that told us they would come, came :/ but we met lots of new people. What was funny was that it was the whole stake, so about 3 or four spanish only branches and a bunch of white wards from north Tucson haha the mexicans were in charge of the music... entonces... it was really loud, and very mexican! and the white people kept turning it down, and then someone from the spanish branches would turn it back up again, and so on and so forth ha ha.

Sad stories:
On sunday morning, we had planned allll week to have a breakfast at la casa de Robles! We made muffins and biscuits and went over there for desayuno to meet Daniella and everyone there and bring her and her kids and her inactive grandma and everyone to church! When we got there it was only hermana Robles, she didnt know where Daniella had been since the night before, she had made us breakfast, but wasn't coming to church b/c she was tired :/

Sunday is "game day." We work all week to invite people to come to church and Noche de Hogar and activities and things liek that, but the final climax of the week is always sunday! This gameday we lost and none of our investigators came to church:/ not even the ones who said they would. But thats okay! We'll gett'em next time.

Spiritual experiences:
Last night actually, we were teaching this man named Hugo. He's really funny, and really pretty golden. He's very spiritual and tells us every time we go there that we are messengers for him from God. we're liek "Yeah! we are!" ha ha. Well last night he was talking, and I was sitting there, very stressed and frustrated as usual that I could understand probably 95 percent of what he was saying but I couldnt for the life of me say what I wanted to say, when I got the strongest prompting to promise him something. This is weird, b/c this is the part of being a missionary that I have not yet experienced and have always been kindof iffy about-- promising someone something will happen if they just come to church, or make time to read the BOM etc. Cuz what if I'm wrong?! I'm no prophet, no patriarch. Anyways after fighting it for a while, the prompting was too string to ignore. So i was trying SO HARD in my head to figure out how to say that I felt prompted by the lord, since I was a rep. of Jesus Christ, that if he would just come to church on saunday with us, he would find answers to his questions and everything would work out at work. While I was struggling to figure this out in spanish, my companion Eld. Burns told him EXACTLY THAT. word for word.
I was and am astonished. This truly is God's work. as missionaries the spirit is speaking through us, 2 maybe sometimes (in our case) three mouths and is saying the same thing: Christ is the way. He's the light. We can't do anything by ourselves, but through faith in Him, we can be better people, and we can be happier. All our Father in Heaven wants for us is to be trully happy.

Anyways I'm taking way too long and I still want to try and send pictures. I love you all so much and I am so grateful to hve such a strong supportive family at home. I look forward to getting my visa, and am still excited to go to Mexico, but honestly I would be just as happy if I stuck around here in Tucson fr the next to years. I'm loving it:) God is slowly but surely making me into who I've always wanted to be - who he kows I can be - exactly who He needs me to be.

I hope to hear from all of you soon! I love written letters:) again thanks for everything,
y recuerden
andamos por fe, no por vista

ELDER SPENCER

10/6/2010

Hola Family!

YESSSS conference was incredible!! I really cannot say enough about it, I was incredibly blessed to have that experience! It was funny to get to drive up to salt lake. From the bus we could see a couple missionaries out tracting in SLC. It is soooo weird to think that I am one of them... and will probaby be in the field within the week!

Okay so I found out Julie and I have the same meal time! So I get to see her and talk to her kind of often:)
ALSO Elder Jacob Lynford (for whatever reason, its weird because he's going to sweden) lives on my floor in the residence hall! Just a door or two down from me!! It is really strange but cool to see so many familiar faces around. I also saw and talked to Mike Bench (also from glendora stake/went to GHS) yesterday, he's going to Chile!

I finally received my long awaited letter from BRAD!
I AM SO EXCITED FOR HIM! I know he belongs in Argentina and it's part of the plan. For as long as I can remember Brad has always wanted to go to Argentina like his Dad. I was so happy when I heard : ) I can't wait for him to get to experience this!

It's starting to get a little bit cold here in utah-- just a little bit. I'm hoping it snows atleast once before I ship out, so thankyou sooo much mom for sendiong the hoodie, I haven't gotten it yet but I DID get my vneck sweater which fits perfectly! I also got two other packages, one full of freshly baked cookies from the BYU bookstare from the Nielsons which was VERY nice of them. It's good to hear that Ryan is doing so well! Maybe I'll be reassigned to Washington like Elder Palfreyman?... I hope!
I also got a package from Amanda and trevor Jex which was VERRRY nice of them! That one had cookies and candy in it too ha ha go figure. So thank you all:)

Alright so here's the deal with the Visas... since our departure date is this coming monday we could go to the travel office and ask if we had visas yet this past monday ( a week before ) and they saId that no one in our district has them:/
BUT they said that we should be getting our reassignments TODAY OR TOMORROW! And thast the visa situation really is kind of speeding up and they are starting to get a constant (but still slow) flow of signed visas coming in. They said that the maximum anyone has been waiting for a mexican visa in another mission in the states has only been about 7 weeks! So it could even be shorter than that.
But the cool thing is that earlier this morning or maybe even right now, the brethren are looking at my face and (by the spirit) making my stateside reassignment! There is a chance it will come in this afternoon but I might not get my travel plans until tomorrow. Either way it's really soon!
I have completely come to terms with being reassigned-- two missions has to be better than one. AND this also means I will probably have two great mission presidents, two great trainers, two "first companions" I'm just really excited. I think this is a blessing.
The elders in the district or two before us who were reassigned were pretty much reassigned to california or idaho if they were from utah, and sent to provo or SLC if they were from anywhere else ha ha. SO it looks like I may be staying here in utah, in which case I might have to figure out how to get some cold weather clothes.
BUT elder Palf was reassigned to Washington forever ago... so maybe since the general authorities thought we should go to the same mission in the first place, we should have the same reassignment ha ha.
I'll obviously go, and be incredibly happy and excited about anywhere:) but I would rather it be somewhere I've never been before if it's at all possible. I guess we'll see tomorrow!!!

Conference was incredible huh???
I couldnt beleive how incredibly applicable to me the ENTIRE weekend was. Getting to be there in the conference center, seeing the prophet of the Lord for the first time DURING priesthood session was the coolest thing I think I've ever done/experienced.
I love this work, I love this gospel, and I love my family.
I will probably send a few written letters out w more but I've really got to go!

a veces cosas son duro/dificil, pero siempre, el evangelio (y vida) es vale la pena

les amo mucho!

-Elder spencer