November 10

My questions:

1) How are you doing in Bluff?

2) What is the weather like there?

3) Do you have fall foliage there?

4) How are your investigators doing?

5) Do you have an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner yet?

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Mom,

1) Things are going amazingly. So far I feel like the things I am witnessing in Bluff is the most success I've been blessed to be able to see since I've been on my mission, things are seriously coming together here. We were able to be blessed with 8 investigators at sacrament yesterday all from the reservation who drove 20-30 miles to Bluff to come to church (the second Sunday is a combined meeting with the Toda Ministry on the rez and the Bluff Branch). Three of them couldn't even speak English and so Sister Clark translated the service for them and it was a seriously spiritual and touching sacrament meeting. It was the best one of my mission. It just showed the amazing qualities of the Bluff Branch. And a less active lady named Nelia who is 80 years old and doesn't speak any English has been reactivated and we have been teaching her and listening to the Book of Mormon in Navajo with her and she is such an amazing and inspiring lady to meet with. There is a serious spirit about her whenever she prays. I'll definitely introduce you all to her whenever we visit the mission, she is the sweetest. She's the same lady we gave a blessing to a month or two ago. 

2) Weather is getting cooler but isn't too bad. Just kind of cold in the mornings and the daytime is 60 degrees most of the time.

3) Bluff the town has some leaves but the rest of the area doesn't. Really we spend about 90%+ of our time on the reservation, that's where most of the work is right now. Out of the 12-15 lessons we teach a week usually only one or two of them are in Bluff. 

4) Tiffany got married on Friday and she is doing fantastic! Keano and Pearlphina are doing great. We taught them on Friday and Pearlphina asked in her closing prayer if the Book of Mormon was true and said to God that if she finds out that it is true that she can't wait to tell all her family and friends about it. They weren't able to attend church yesterday because of a family reunion but they said they will make it this week. Cody made it to church and we pushed his date back to December 20th so we can work with him on some more stuff. We picked up a new investigator named Briannon who is engaged to a less active member here and we're planning on setting a date with her tonight for the 20th or 27th. 

5) Yes, the Gruettes here in Bluff are planning on having us over. They live here during the winter and in Mancos, CO in the summer so they just moved back about a month ago or less. 

It sounds like things are going really well back at home! I'm glad to hear that Karson was able to return to his mission and that Eric is getting to enjoy camping out. I don't think my camping in the RV was quite as intense as his. Here's some pictures of the area here. I love you all!

Love,
Elder Schaelling

November 3

Mom,

I don't know how it's already November! The time sure is just flying by. Thank you so much for your prayers for everyone. Tiffany and her son were luckily able to make it to church yesterday and it was really cool to have her there. She is super solid and is excitedly working towards baptism. We were able to see many miracles this week. Last week we had MLC and President and Sister Batt asked each set of zone leaders to fast for another zone and so the Page zone leaders fasted for the Utah zone and we fasted for Kirtland zone and it was a pretty awesome experience! Many miracles. We were able to set two new baptismal dates with Keano and Pearlphina for December 13th. They are a young couple and her father recently passed away and they have pretty awesome questions and a strong desire to learn.

We had a really interesting experience this week. We decided to do our fast for Kirtland zone on Friday and so we started fasting and we were over on miles already from our trip to Farmington so we decided we would ask one of the senior missionaries to drive us out to a part of the reservation where we could work and walk for a few hours and we told him we would call him when we were ready to be picked back up. So we had him drop us off at a group of about 7 houses about 13 miles away from Bluff or so and we would try everyone there and then walk to an area called White Rock which was about 4 or 5 miles away from there to be picked up there. So we walked about 5 miles in the sand while fasting and praying and at the end of our journey we met a really interesting guy who was struggling in life and was even considering ending his life but we found him and talked to him about the Plan of Salvation and had a very spiritual lesson with him! It was an amazing experience. 

I love you all, have a great week!

October 27

My questions:

1) Congratulations on the huge attendance at church last week!!!  How did things go today?

2) That is wonderful that you have so many baptism dates scheduled!!! How are they all doing?

3) I loved hearing about your solution to the mean barking dog problem!  That made me laugh out loud! Does the Force and/or Harry Potter spells still seem to be effective?

4) I remember that the Shiprock Ward had a pretty good Halloween party last year.  Any party plans for either of your branches this year?

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Mom,

1/2) Things were pretty good today! Cody was able to make it with his grandma again to church and a member we have been working with to get the Aaronic Priesthood, Leroy, made it also! And a recent convert who had missed church for about two months made it yesterday for the first time, so that was good. Tiffany unfortunately didn't make it because her son got sick and they took him to the Shiprock hospital on Sunday morning. We are looking at organizing a marriage for her and her husband to make it official so she can get baptized and she's pretty excited to get baptized on the 29th! We haven't been able to see Rose yet since we set the date so hopefully we'll catch her soon!

3) Yes, it is highly effective! Usually dogs are "rock trained" so if you bend down like you're going to pick up a rock to throw at them they run away but they always come back. When we cast spells at them they seem to be super confused and they leave us alone after that haha.

4) Not yet, there was a Halloween party at the preschool in Toda (the same building church is at) but it was a family thing not church sponsored.

That's pretty crazy, the church building is going to be an exclusively YSA building? That's awesome that Lauren and Jaymee were in the Primary presidency with everything! How long ago did each of them get baptized? Is the pink chapel going to be a stake center for a YSA stake or anything or is the YSA ward still under the jurisdiction of our stake?

Sounds like there will be a lot of family for me to meet when I get back home! I'll be excited to get to know them all. That's good to hear that the Civic is still in the family. Do Nate and Natalie still have the maroon Civic that I drove?

This past week we had a zone training meeting where Elder Vicnesky and myself gave a training on "Being the Message of Jesus Christ" and about how important it is that we as members and missionaries are the message of Jesus Christ so that it might be able to shine forth unto the world. I feel like that is the theme behind the Meet the Mormons movie that came out, that it's less about the doctrine that we have that will attract others to us, but about the people we are. As Elder Robbins said to us when he visited our mission "Between 'being' and 'doing', 'being' is the weightier of the two verbs." Also, in his phenomenal conference talk delivered this past conference he talked about how to know Christ was to know the Father, and that they were in perfect unity as Father and Son. Our objective as disciples of Christ should be to know us is to know Christ himself. "Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect." 3 Nephi 12:48 Also, I love a passage that I came across recently in regards to this. 2 Corinthians 4:3-6. I do know that as we strive to be like Christ the power of the Atonement comes into our lives. Go forth and be the message of Jesus Christ!

Love,

Elder Schaelling