You are Invited!!!!

Elder Randy Anderson will return to Basin City, Washington from serving a two year mission in Colorado for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Wednesday, February 9, 2011.

Randy will be speaking Sunday, February 13, 2011, at 10:30 a.m. in the Basin City LDS Church.

All are welcome to attend.

Last Letter From Elder Randy Anderson

Well i guess this is it!?!?! pretty crazy to think that i've been out just over 2 years now, the time sure has gone by fast. i dont want to write to much today but i just wanted to sent a quick email and thank all of you who have followed along on my blog for your constant support and prayers on my behalf. I hope that the Lord will bless you for your diligence and willingness to support me. it means so much to me to know i have so many people back home in the Basin that have me in their thoughts.

I'm so grateful for the chance i've had to be out here to Serve my Father in Heaven in the Colorado Denver South Mission, and for the wonderful people i've met and the spiritual experiences i've had! Being out here on my mission has helped me strengthen my testimony that i know that there is a God above who's full of love and wants all of his children to be happy. 2 Nephi 2:25 "Adam Fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." The whole purpose of God's plan is for us to experience joy and he has blessed us in so many ways that we can experience that joy. i've been blessed to experience it myself and been able to see that joy brought into others lives as they accept our Savior and his plan for us.

i know that Jesus Christ is the Saviour and Redeemer of the world and that through him ALL things are possible if we faith and align our will with that of our Father in Heaven. We have a modern day prohphet who leads and guides us here upon the earth. If you do not have a testimony of this i invite you to kneel down in humble prayer and ask our Father in Heaven to give you this witness.

Christ's church is once again upon the earth after many many years of darkness God showed His love to us once again by calling a prohpet to restore His church here upon the earth and where the priesthood authority (power to act in the name of God) is.We are so tremendously blessed and i thank my Father in Heaven everyday for giving us this gift. It's through the Priesthood power that families can be sealed together for time and all eternity in the Sacred house of the Lord. That in itself brings me some of the greatest joy, knowing that i can live with my family together forever, not just 'til this life is over but in the life to come!

Once again to all of you who have been following along with my blog i want to thank you from the bottom of my heart and dont think this is the end! :)

we'll stay in touch even though i wont be out here on my mission. i love you all and i say these things in the name of our Saviour even Jesus Christ. Amen...

See you in a couple of days! :) love you all!

love, Randy

I will be leaving early Saturday morning with the Larsen's and heading over to Denver, get some stuff done and then go to the temple session at 5:00pm, i'm really looking forward to that. and then after that i'll stay with some other missionaries in the Denver area 'til Tuesday morning and then transfer meetting will happen early that morning and then i'll have my closing interview with President Maynes and then we are free to go visit previous areas between like 10 and 5, we then have to be back to the mission office at 5 to head to the mission home and have our last dinner with the mission president and his wife then we weigh lugage and hang out and then the next morning we take off to the airport, so that is kind of what is going on this up coming weekend. so to answer your question, no i will not be coming back to Parachute it's a good 3 1/2 hour drive over to Denver from here. and Elder Castro will go with the Rifle Elders between saturday and tuesday when he will get his new comp. i got a whole list of people in the area that i want to say good bye to before i take off and i'm making sure to take pictures of them and the area.

this past week was a good one and i'm hoping to have another great week, i'll see y'all in no time! :) take care and be safe. i love you all so much and look forward to seeing you! love you!!!
love Randy

This past week has been kind of a slow one because Elder Castro has been sick and our mission Presidents wife told him to wait it out and see if it gets better and he wasn't feeling up to going out all day long so he tried sleeping it off and then we finally got him to the Dr on Wednesday and they said he had sinus and ear infections so they gave him tons of meds and then he took him and knocked out all day Wednesday also ha so we really didn't get out 'til Thursday, which still gave us some time to do work.

there is so much potential in this area i'm excited to keep in touch and see what happens with the work after i leave because there is easily 6 people that are close for baptism between part member families and investigators, so i'm happy for the area and the things happening. We had 88 people out to church this past Sunday which was way awesome, everyone is excited and happy about the work we have going on right now with less actives and getting them back to church. there is this one brother in the ward who hadn't been to church in 5 years except for once when his daughter was blessed but, he has been out 4 times now since i've been in the area and has been the last 2 weeks in a row! :) nothing brings me greater joy than to see this type of stuff happening because i know that their family is getting closer to going to the temple and being sealed together! i love being a missionary! :)

i was able to teach the Gospel Principles class in church this past week, it was the first week we've had this class since the branch opened up so it was awesome. they got a Branch Mission Leader called a couple weeks ago and so it has been good being able to work with him and trying to help him know what types of things he does. i also had the privilege to interview a whole family for their baptism that is coming up on the 5th of Feb. that was the first time i had interviewed a whole family, there are 3 kids and the mom and dad that are getting baptized. it is so cool to see them make this choice as a family and the story behind how they were introduced to the church.

i got permission from President Maynes to go to the sealing of Brother and Sister Benton on the night of the 5th, so i'll leave Parachute the morning of the 5th and head over with the Larsens, grab lunch or something and then they are going to go to the sealing as well! i'm met some awesome people out here and i'm so grateful to have had the chance to be out here amongst them.

take care and i'll see ya in 16 days! :)
love Randy

Yesterday was a record at church we had 105 people come out to church which is really awesome. There was a baby blessing so that brought in some of their family but even if that wasn't yesterday i think we would have had close to 90, i was so excited yesterday as we were greeting people at the door and i kept seeing people we invited to come actually show up! it was probably one of the best Sundays on my mission, and i even spoke at church and i still thought it was a great Sunday kind of scary huh? haha.. i thought my talk went well and i did it all without writing anything down ha i just talked and read some scriptures, which i probably wont be able to do with my talk in the home ward since you say it will be 30 minutes! lol you're kidding me, you better get an exact amount of time from Bishop Davidson so i can kind of start thinking about it.

Pauline one of the people that we are working with is set with a date to be baptized, i hope it goes through and we can do everything that we can to help prepare her for it. The only bummer is that it is the 12th of Feb ha so i'll be gone. :( but that's ok i dont need to be there for it i'm just glad that i've been able to take part in teaching her and bringing her closer to Christ.

We have got a few other people that we are working with as of recent so the work with actual investigators is picking up which is awesome to see and as the members continue to do missionary work there will be more and more!

i also found out today in an email that Brother Benton from Highlands Ranch is going to be sealed to his wife the 5th of Feburary so maybe i can get over there early some how and i will be able to attend that. i'll have to talk with my mission President and see and also with the Larsens who are taking me back over to Denver to see if it will all work out.

well i cant wait to hear from y'all next week! :) i hope this week goes well for all of you! i miss ya and love you and i'll see you in 23 days!
love Randy

It's Official Elder Anderson will return Home on Wednesday, February 9, 2011

That's pretty crazy that y'all got that information this past week, that means that i must be getting mine some time this week. like you said it is weird to think that it is actually time, i cant believe that i go to Seattle from Denver and then back to Pasco haha i'm going to fly over Pasco on the way to Seattle. Too bad i cant parachute out of the plane flying over home haha. but i'm sure my letter will come this week telling me all about it like the one you got.

so you said that i'm on for the 13th to speak in church, that should be pretty sweet and i still am speaking for 20 minutes about whatever i want right? matt gets home the 18th so 9 days after me which is way crazy! ha and that would be fun for us to do a fireside i think. i still cant believe how fast all of this is coming, it doesn't seem real and i'm excited to come home but nervous at the same time ya know?

Dad, I love your hair cut, i didn't think you would do it that quick, it looks awesome and i cant wait to come home and see you and the family! y'all have been such blessings to me in my life and i know i wouldn't be out here on my mission helping so many other people if it weren't for you. i know that Jesus Christ lives, that He loves all the same and that He came to this earth to atone for our sins, He's paid the price all we have to do is repent and become cleansed and we've been promised eternal life which is one of the greatest gifts of God, and there we can life as families together. i know this is Christs church here upon thee earth and that we have a living Prophet who leads and guides it. The power of prayer is real, i love prayer and know that God answers prayers and He answers everyones prayer if we pray with faith and real intent which means we are willing to act on the answer we recieve. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is real and i have truly enjoyed being in the service of the Lord these past 2 years. i love you all so much!

So i found out yesterday that i'm speaking in church this up coming week, my comp and i are speaking with one of the members of the mission Presidency so it wont be to bad with 3 speakers i think they asked me to speak for 10-12 minutes. which will be nice because it will help prepare me for my homecoming talk. this past sunday we had a good turn out at church and even though it went down a couple from the previous weeks i'm counting on it being over 80 my last few weeks. we have been seeing progress with people that we are working with and so i know they'll be coming out here real soon.

i have loved being able to serve in the Parachute area and i'm going to miss it so much when i leave, the members are awesome and help us out with everything we need. i hope to be that great of help to the missionaries once i get home. We were able to teach primary yesterday because one of the teachers didn't show up and it was pretty fun, except there were 2 kids that kept talking to eachother and they were distracting the rest of the class.. ha it made me think back to when i was in primary or even sunday school as a youth and i thought of how big of a pain i must have been to my teachers. i should apologize to them. ha..

Well i had my last zone confrence this past friday and was able to say good bye to some good friends of mine. i hope i'll be able to see them at some point down the road. We were trainned on how to find more people to teach and the different ways. it was interesting but i feel like i have heard all of that stuff we covered at least 2 other times on my mission, it was still great though.


well thanks for the email and all the news i hope y'all are doing well and have a great week! i'm doing well and cant wait to see you! miss you so much and love you!

love Randy

yetserday we had 76 people turn out so just a couple less than we did last week which kind of stinks but a couple people were still out of town for the break because people dont start school until tomorrow down here. we need 80 people for a constant while for them to start building a building so i'm sure it will happen here within the next two years there will be a nice full size building in Parachute which will be sweet to go back and visit and see how much everything has grown!

we found a new investigator this past week. it was Pauline and Brittanys friend, she had heard that she was visiting with the mormon missionaries and so she told them that she wanted to sit in and listen as well. we were way excited when we heard it. you never know how or where you can find people to teach that's why you always need to be looking for people and opportunities whether it's actually talking with people of just being an example everywhere you go. we hope good things come of this.

We had quite a few people show up this past sunday that normally dont show up and that didn't show up last week so that was awesome. i get really excited when i see people pull up that we have been trying to work with it just makes my day!

i know this is a pretty short email but i feel like there isn't a whole lot to talk about so i'll just hear from ya next week and then talk with ya in 37 days! lol so crazy to think about. but i hope that school and work go well with everyone starting it back up. thanks for all you do and i'm looking forward to getting the pictures soon. i love you all and cant wait to see you! :)
love Randy

December 27, 2010

yesterday at church we had 79 people there which was awesome i thought it was a great turn out and we had people out of town so next week should be about the same. there was lots of people that haven't been to church in a long time that showed up so it was good to see them. it was really exciting seeing some of the inactives we are working with come. i was able to say the first prayer in the first sacrament meeting in the Parachute Branch! lol so i'm going down in history with that! ha not much though huh? all we had yesterday was the sacrament meeting because they haven't finished extending all of the callings and organizing things so this next week will be all 3 meetings. other than that not too much has happened, but i'm sure more things will happen by next week when i email.

oh and i am staying here in Parachute with Elder Castro for my last transfer! The Larsens told me that they would take me from here to Denver when it's time for me to head back. So in 42 days from today i'll be heading over to Denver to spend my last 2 days there then in 44 days i'll be seeing y'all! :) cant wait... i hope y'all have a great rest of your trip and you enjoy your time down there. everyone have fun snowmobiling for me! :( ha miss you and love you!!!

love Randy

December 18, 2010

Well this week is going to be exciting i hope there are people around for us to talk to, it seems like lots of people are heading out of town for Christmas. Christmas Eve we have 2 meals lined up and we are going caroling then we are going to another families home to read the Christmas story and hang out and eat goodies so it should be fun.

then on Christmas day we'll do the normal thing and then at noon we are going to go to Rifle to play some football and then take off from there up to Glenwood to go to the Larsen's and I'm sure we'll stay there the rest of the day and that's where i call y'all from. so i doubt I'll all before 2, just a heads up. oh and we are in the same time zone since your in Idaho. so just have you're phone by you from 2 on.

we didn't have any investigators show up to church yesterday which really sucked but I'm hoping that with the branch opening this next week that we'll get a lot more people out. we've been going through the ward list again telling everyone about it opening up this week because when we went through the first time we weren't sure when it would open. it will be weird having so few people in the branch but it will grow as time moves on!

we we're able to do quite a bit of tracting this past week and got lots of potential investigators but it seems like they are just telling us to come back to be nice to us, which stinks i just wish people would be honest with us the first time they talk to us. because it's really frustrating when you go back to a door after someone told you to come back and then you go back and they say no they don't want to talk to us. we've been working really hard with the in-actives as well but are seeing little progress which also can get kind of frustrating. i love being able to worry only about helping other people but at the same time it is hard when you try so hard to help them but they put forth such little effort on their part ya know?

on a happier note it has been great in my studies this past little while to focus on the life of our Savior and all He has done for us! Let us all remember the true meaning of Christmas and why it is we celebrate it. Jesus Christ came into this world to fulfill His mission to organize His church and to Atone for our sins so that we might be able to apply the Atonement and the Gospel principles and ordinances into our lives so when the time comes we will be able to return to live with Him and our Father In Heaven. This is a great time of year and i am so grateful for my Savior and the many blessings He has and does continue to give to me!

Cant wait to talk with y'all on Saturday have a great week and be safe! miss you and love you!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

love Randy

Christmas Letter to Missionaries

Dear Friends,

It’s a great time to be a missionary isn’t it! The work of the Lord continues to move forward faster and stronger than eve r, and we are so blessed to be a part of it. My brother in law once taught me a great analogy and I would love to share it with you. As he drove down the Gorge between Washington and Oregon he saw the Columbia River. The wind was blowing very strong and it was blowing the opposite way that the river was flowing, it was causing 5 foot waves pushing up current. Although on the surface it appeared the wind was pushing the water upstream, the great Columbia continued to flow e very strong. He related this to the Lord’s work. Sure at times we run into challenges or have difficult moments when Satan is trying to stop the work of the Lord from moving forward, but it will ALWAYS move forward. He worded it a lot better, but I hope you understand what it means.

It has been or is such a blessing to be a full time missionary I am truly enjoying my service to our Heavenly Father and hope all of you are as well. Enjoy every part of your mission both good and bad. I am grateful to all of you and your examples to me. Don’t get discouraged out here the Lord is on our side and we will win the fight. I know that Jesus Christ lives and speaks with our church leaders to help us know what we need to be doing. Follow their council in all that you do. I know the words they speak are scripture as is the Bible and Book of Mormon, study from them daily and you will be blessed.

I love you all so much and wish you the best this holiday season, and throughout the rest of your mission.

Till we meet again, God Speed!

Love, Elder Randy Anderson

it has really hit me this week knowing how little time i have left, i was reading in the doctrine and covenants the other day and i realized how long i had left and i spaced out thinking about how i'm not ready to go home and how i wish i could continue. then a couple days after that i got a letter from the mission office telling me "now that you only have a couple months left you need to make sure you give it your best and endure to the end, to be an example to younger missionaries" and i had another blue day when i was kind of out of it! it's really weird though because i never thought i'd be to this point, i always heard of missionaries getting there but i always told myself i wouldn't be like that, and here i am feeling those same feelings.

i'm going to miss being a full time missionary being able to forget about myself and solely focus on other people and how i can help them. i love seeing the joy people can recieve in their lives and the awesome friendships i've built out here.


but enough sad stuff, this past week besides all of that was a pretty good week. we are offically our own "unit" down in Parachute, yesterday made it final that the Parachute branch was created. although we will not start meeting 'til the 26th of this month it is a branch and we found out who our branch Presidency is. it was a pretty easy guess though and i had 2 out of the 3 right. i'm really looking forward to it though, and so are most of the members down there. some of them are really sad that they wont be together with the same big group of people as they have been for the past however long they've been a ward together. but it is sweet knowing that the work of the Lord is moving forward! :)

the stake President came up to Elder Castro and i and told us that he is excited about all of the work we have going on down there, i thought that was awesome hearing that from him.

In Rifle every year about this time they have a community Christmas choir event when the choirs from the the Catholic church, Methodist church and the Mormon church all go to one of their buildings and they sing. that was last night and i really enjoyed it, it was held in our church this year and the whole chapel was full and all the way back into the gym. the different choirs got up and sang and then at the end of it all of the congregation got up and sang together, it was really neat to see all of these different faiths together singing and worshipping our Savior Jesus Christ! We had 2 of our investigators show up which was great, our Branch Presidents wife brought them for us because they weren't able to drive themselves so it was a good opportunity for them to fellowship them as well!

Other than that we had an average week, we were able to go tracting, and we taught 17 lessons and we even got to do some service! :) so it was a good week.

i love you all and cant wait to talk to you in 12 days! crazy huh?
love Randy

The new apartment is pretty nice, a smoker lived there before us so it stank like smoke when we first moved in but we have candles going and smell good things plugged into the outlets ha so it's gradually getting better. we got everything moved in Saturday morning, the only thing is we only have 1 chair in the whole apartment so we eat breakfast and lunch sitting on the ground ha but we are hoping to get more chairs sometime this week. I'll have to take pictures of the place and send them to you,

it is pretty nice living in the actual area we work in now because that drive was getting pretty boring everyday twice a day and it was a waste of time. the members down there are excited that we got a place down there because the branch is coming soon! :) this upcoming Sunday (moms 50th ha) the stake President is going to announce the new boundries and the ward split and present the callings to the congregation and on the 26th of December we will have our first meeting down there! :) i'm really excited and looking forward to it, i think with the branch opening up down there it will get a lot of the in-actives coming out again because they cant use the excuse that it is too far to drive. something else that is pretty neat is the day the branch opens will be exactly 2 years after i took my endowment out!

this past sunday Pauline and Brittany came to church and brought Brittany's boyfriend! my comp and i were so excited when we saw there car pull up! it was fast and testimony meeting also so it was great for them to hear so many testimonies, the spirit was so strong there! i even got up and bore my testimony! :) but afterwards i asked pauline what she thought of church and she said it was different than any other church she had been to and i asked what she meant and she said it was peaceful and she felt calm and happy! i was like that's the spirit you felt here today, and read with her the scripture in Galatians 5:22 talkinbout the fruits of the spirit. then we took them on a church tour and showed them all the paintings and explained them and showed them the baptismal font. and when we were at the font the daughter and boyfriend were like what is this and so we said this is the baptismal font and Pauline (the mom) said just like Jesus Christ was baptized by John the Baptist and we were like exactly! ha the only way of baptism is the baptism by emersion by someone holding the Priesthood authority of God. and we have an appointment with them this week and we are going to try and set them with a baptismal date! :)

it was a great day yesterday! :) then last night my companion and i were able to give to Priesthood blessings to a part member family. we gave the blessings to the husband who is not a member and his mother, i know that their hearts will be softened from the experience they will have by witnessing the power of God.

i haven't put my bike on craigs list because i think i'm just going to sell it to Elder Castro. it will be lots easier and i wont have to worry about it. we are heading up to Glenwood today to go get some exercise so that's what we have planned today.

i hope everyones week goes great! i miss you so much! thank you for all the support and letters you send to me! i love you! :)
love Randy

This past week has flown by but at the same time it has gone by kind of slow. so how is everyone doing? i hope that work,school, and everything else is going well for y'all. things are going great for me out here, this winter weather and long nights make me really tired all the time. i agree about being used to having pdays on wednesdays and having to adjust to monday, i'm not so sure if i like it or not.

i think later today we are going to go up to Glenwood and play basketball and football. we were originally planning on moving out today into our other place but yesterday we had ward council and my comp was the one that was in the meeting and he didn't get everything organized with the ward so it will probably be later this week sometime. he was the one in there because we were on team ups temporarily so all 4 of us wouldn't have to be in the same meeting, only one from each area.

i do have my new address so you can start sending stuff to that address, because we have the keys to the place and have been taking a few things with us every time we go down there. the address is

854 W. Battlment Parkway L-101
Parachute, Co 81635

this past week was kind of a slow one for work because most of the families we are working with were out of town for the holiday, but we were still able to teach a of couple people. so last monday night we left here in Rifle at about 6:30 and headed up to Frisco, the roads were good most of the way except for Vail pass which is at 10,680 ft so you could imagine it getting snow. but we made it to the cabin safely and spent the night there. it was such a beautiful cabin i loved it! they had 10 sleds just sitting outside so of course i had to go and start one up and smell the beautiful smell of snowmobiles! ha i wanted to ride it so bad but we didn't asked the member that owned them so i decided it wouldn't be smart!

tomorrow we have a miniture zone confrence here in Rifle and also interviews, so it will be good to talk with President Maynes and have him help me out on how i can be a better trainer. It's crazy for me to think that this will be my 2nd to last zone confrence.

so when we were up at that leadership training it hit me for the first time that i'm really going to miss being a missionary, i was talking with Elder Allred and he brought up how much time i had left and the fact that i was the oldest missionary there and it really hit me then how close it is to me going home, i'm excited to see all of you but i like doing what i'm doing.

So yesterday during sacrament a young man from the ward gave his farewell talk and it was on how he prepared for a mission. towards the end of his talk he said how he knows it will be hard at first but he hopes to be a great missionary like Elder Anderson. lol i thought to myself what the crap, no way you dont want to be like me ha. but he was being serious and he talked about me for like 30 seconds ha. although i dont think i'm that great of an example i think it's really neat that he thinks that of me.

Saturday night we had a lesson with the Trujillo's which is a part member family and the spirit was so strong there i invited him to pray to know if the things we teach are true and after that invited him to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God and he said that he would if he recieved an answer! it was awesome, but the thing is getting him and everyone else to actually pray. because i know that if anyone takes the promise found in Moroni 10:3-5 seriously then they will recieve an answer.

we had a great Thanksgiving, we were able to play football for a couple of hours in the morning and then we went and had two meals! i felt so fat afterwards, well i was so fat afterwards!

i hope that everything is going well for all of you and you have a great week! happy early birthday Aunt Janet, you're getting old! haha and mom you're gonna be .... i dont even wanna say! lol miss you and love you all so much! cant wait to hear back. Christmas is just around the corner and that means i get to call home! :)
love Randy

My new comp is Elder Castro and he is from LA California. He's 21 as well and excited to be on his mission. it has been great serving with him so far, he is really quite when we are in appointments so i do most of the talking ha but i totally understand because that's exactly how i was earlier on in my mission.

I still pray that i'll be able to do a good job while i train him because i'm really nervous and dont want to mess his mission up. it is really a humbling experience helping him because as i teach him how the mission is, i see the things that i need to work on myself. i'll take a picture of us and send it to you as soon as i get a picture and get that other sd card back.

well i've been told that they found us a place to live down in Parachute so that will be cool i guess, i was kind of hoping that we'd be able to stay up here in Rifle since they only have 4 of us in the duplex now. we are going down there later today to get our keys and all the info. so if you have things you were planning on sending between now and next monday go ahead and send it to the 695 McCarron Ct and i'll get it from there 'til i get you my new address.

so tomorrow we have a leadership training up in Frisco at 9. We were originally planning on leaving early ealry tomorrow morning but since it is snowing now we are going to head up there tonight around 6 and stay in a cabin that a member owns up there. my comp will be on team ups with another missionary 'til i get back. and i'm the one that gets to drive our group up to Frisco so it will be awesome driving in the snow and staying in a cabin tonight! :) i'm so excited!!!

we didn't have any of our investigators show up to church yesterday because of the snow, if they really wanted to they would have made it but i think satan just gave them ideas not to go.

so i heard another story of when the branch is supposed to open, either the very first sunday in the new year or the last one in december because they are wanting to have the last Chirstmas service be together.

we have been seeing progress in those that we are working with and that always makes it worth it. anyone who will listen and ask with a sincere heart will progress in my opinion, i've loved seeing the blessings and progress that people can make and recieve as they apply the teachings of the Gospel into their lives. i hope y'all are being missionaries in your own way. it's our privilige to share with others those blessings we have and can recieve from living the teachings of the Gospel.

ok so last wednesday we went up to eagle to drop off my companion and then i was on team ups with another missionary for that day 'til i got my companion the next day and he had been having stomach pains all that night before and throughout the whole day on wednesday, so we got back into Glenwood Springs and we were just resting at their apartment and i was like we should call someone to see whats up. so i called Sister Larsen and asked her what the symptoms of having an appendicites and she was telling us what they were and it was the same things he was feeling so we got permission from Sister Maynes or mission President's wife and i took him to the hospital and they put him through a CT to see if it really was or if it was something else and sure enough he had one. we went to the hostpital at 1:30 and he didn't go into surgery until 6.

Sister Larsen works at the hospital so she came down and spent a lot of time with us making sure he was alright and she had brother Larsen come into the hospital to help me give him a Priesthood blessing before he went into surgery. then i went on team ups with Brother Larsen for like 2 hours while he was in surgery and recovery and the Glenwood Elders went to the hostpital and waited for him to come out.

so because he had surgery he had to spend the night in the hospital and so i was privileged to stay with him! ha it was awesome though because before brother Larsen and i went back they took me to wal-mart and got us stuff we needed like showering stuff and then they bought me dinner to take back with me. they spoiled us like crazy and i'm so grateful for them and all the help they gave us. The Glenwood hospital is probably the nicest hospital i've ever been in, it is so fancy and the rooms are awesome! i was hoping we could have stayed another night ha. but he is doing great now and is out doing work. it was lots better than i can describe. ha

Oh this Thursday is our pday this week because of thanksgiving and we have 2 dinners lined up! maybe we'll get another one we'll see.

Happy early Thanksgiving, i hope y'all have a great week together! think of me! ha all is well with me down this way and i cant wait to hear back from you. i miss you and love you!

love Randy

Another snowing day here in Colorado, the time is getting closer and closer to the BIG day! lol i cant believe how fast time is going by. so i just found out on monday starting this next week our pdays will be on monday from now on, so email ethier sunday or monday morning. Our mission President said that the missionary department of the church encourages it and so that is what he is wanting to do, i was kind of bummed about the whole deal but whatever i only have to email 12 more times! ha

so with pday being on monday it is changing a couple things up at least i have heard we will learn more about it for sure this upcoming tuesday at a leadership training. but i was told that with pday being monday, transfers will be on tuesdays and we will go home on wednesdays not fridays, so if that's right i'll be home the 9th of Feb. not the 11th. which means it's exactly 12 weeks away from today. 84 days! haha so crazy.

anyways so yeah i also recieved a call monday night from President Maynes and he called me to train a new missionary, which should be a really exciting thing but i'm not too excited for it! ha i'm actually kind of nervous. i think it will be a real humbling experience, because how i train will be a foundation for the rest of his mission and i dont want to mess it up! that's why i never wanted to train. but come what may and love it. right!? ha

i believe i am staying as district leader but i wont find out for sure until tomorrow.

another rumor floating around is that the Parachute branch will open up on moms BIG BDAY! lol so i hope that goes through, at the same time i'm sure the missionaries will be doing lots of assignments or giving talks to start off if we dont have a ton of people!

my comp took off today and is on his way back to Denver and he flies out on friday. the work in the Parachute area continues to move forward and i hope that it wont slow down.

we had a brother come to church on sunday that hasn't been to church in over 3 years since his little girl was blessed, it was so awesome to see him come because we have been working with him for so long! i think re-activating members is so awesome! rekindling that spark that they once had. so this next 6 weeks i have a lot to look forward to! i also call home this transfer, isn't that weird? time just flies by too fast.

i hope all is well and y'all have a great week! :) miss you so much and love you!! you could call the mission office to confirm that whole leaving 2 days early thing if you want.

love Randy

One year older and WISER TOO! lol NOT!! i had a great birthday though, thank you so much for all the gifts and birthday wishes, it was a great day. i woke up and opened the gifts and then had a normal morning. then for lunch we all (the 6 of us) went to a place called rib city (really good bbq) then we went out to Parachute and worked until 5 then we headed back to Rifle because the Larsen family came down from Glenwood and took us out to dinner.

it was awesome being able to see them and we had a good dinner, then after that there was a FHE activity at the church for our investigators or families that we are working with to go to and so we did that from 7-8 or so then i went and bought some IBC ROOTbeer and went back to the place! ha i really loved all the things you sent me, and the cards were great! the only thing that could have made it better was if i was able to see all of you! karie sent me a cd with pictures and videos of Raegan and that got me really trunky, probably the best gift! ha not that i didn't like any of the others because i really love them!

sounds like the football team is rolling right along, so this past week was the first round of playoffs and this upcoming week is the quater finals, is that right? i hope i hear from kraymer and kade about the games. i heard from them a few weeks back and didn't write them back yet, sorry guys. ha but they seem to be doing good. so continue to kick butt guys! bring home the gold!!!

well the work is starting to pick up in Parachute and we have some good things going. we finished last week with 19 lessons taught to investigators and/or less active members. and we have a great start to this week so far. this past sunday we had 2 investigators come to church, it was awesome seeing them there. we also got 4 new investigators throughout the week, which is really exciting for being down there, but what i love is how humble most of the people are.

the Hurley family came to church this past sunday as well, we have been working with them trying to get them out and they made it! :) then they also came to the FHE activity on monday night, and then last night we had dinner at their house and we had navajo tacos but these weren't knock off's these were the real deal! ha because they are native americans! Sister Hurley is going to have her baby anytime this week, which will be the 9th one!

they found a place to rent to start the branch up, i heard that they are going to rent out part of the senior center which is kind of weird but hey they have so much space they're not using right now that they wanted to rent it out so my guess is before Chirstmas we will be going to church down there in Parachute with our own branch.

i gave up on looking for a place to live down there because i figured it's better to teach people then look for a place to live so i'm sure when the Lord is ready he'll find something that is available to us. transfers are next week, so next time i email i'll let you know if i'll still be in Parachute or not, my guess is that i will be!

but the Lord's work continues to move forward and i'm happy so all is well!

i need to write some thank you letters for the things i recieved for my birthday and i also need to write y'all back. i think it's like 93 days or something i cant remember but it continues to fly by. i love you all so much! thanks for all you do.

love Randy

so this past week was a great week. Saturday we had our trunk-or-treat thing and we had so many non members and less actives show up! it is good to have those ward activities like that, we also had a few non members come out and play flag football with us. it was awesome! thank you for sending my cleats i forgot how amazing i was! lol NOT!!!

but at the trunk or treat thing we all dressed up in old school suit coats and then we decorated our trunk, it was really fun i liked this Halloween a lot better than last years. i took pictures so you can see when i send this sd card home.

yesterday we had an appt with an inactive couple and he is an RM, well we were there talking and i asked him where he served and he said that he served in Washington DC and i knew his age and figured it was about the same time that Reese served so i was like did you by chance know an Elder Edler and he was like ya i guess they didn't serve together but lived in the same apartment! at first i was like does this guy really know him or is he just saying this ya know? and then he was like yeah he would always talk about tractors and fields and i started laughing and said YOU DO KNOW HIM!!! so tell Reese that Elder Shaefermyer (sp) says hi! it's sad that a returned missionary has gone completely in-active, i hate seeing people do that.

right after that appt we had another one with the Hurley family and they are in-active as well. they are native american and have 8 almost 9 kids, she is due on the 8th! :) but anyways we had an awesome lesson the spirit was so strong and the dad totally took charge and was saying what they need to work on as a family and how they need to re-dedicate themselves. it was probably the most spiritual lesson i had in this area. they have a few kids that haven't been baptized so we are trying to work with the dad so that he will be able to baptize them. as soon as my comp and i got in the car we were yelling and saying that was so awesome! this is why i love the mission so much, because i can see the change that the Gospel can bring to people in their lives if they let it.

we have had a few appts that were just spanish speaking and i feel like i do nothing in those because i dont! haha i just sit there and try to stay awake, i was going to try and learn spanish but i gave up on that quick! ha i need to get going though cuz my time is up!

i cant wait to get my package and the letters from y'all! keep strong at studying and saying your prayers! i love you and miss you!

love Randy

Well another week has gone by and it's been awhile since i emailed last, but it still feels like it was only a week. this past week was awesome with the different confrences & meetings we had.

Tuesday we were able to go up to Frisco for a leadership training and i really enjoyed the confrence he trainned on how it important or crucial it is to have the spirit with us as we teach. it went from 9 to 2 so it was pretty lengthy but it was well worth going, having the opportunity to be trained by a member of the seventy. it was funny on the way up there we left at about 6:30 that morning and we met up with some other Elders in Glenwood so our companions could go on team ups while we were gone and so there were 5 of us in some sort of leader ship in the car and Elder Christensen was driving (he's the one from Walla Walla) and we figured we were going to be late and he did not want to speed so we pulled over and i jumped in the drivers seat and we were making good time until we came up behind a cop and so i didn't want to pass him speeding so i just stayed behind him and he was going faster than the speed limit as much as 15 mph above it so i just stayed behind up until about 5 miles out from Frisco he turns his lights on pulls over to the side of the road and so i go around him and then he turns his lights off and gets in right behind me and followed us the rest of the way 'til we exited of at Frisco! haha it was so scary i thought for sure i was going to get pulled over or get my first ticket! then on the way home that night we stopped by and had dinner at the Larsens in Glenwood, it was so awesome to see them again! i miss going over to there place and visiting with them.

Anyways then the next day we went to Grand Junction for our Zone Confrence and we were trainned by him again, so i got to spend 2 days being instructed by a General Authority it was really neat! i was able to jot down lots of notes and things on how to help me become a better missionary.

we're still working with trying to figure out who everyone is in Parachute and it really suprises me how many members there are down there. there are 124 house holds in Parachute that are on the ward roster but i dont even think 1/4 of them are active! i've noticed that there are lots of part member famlies, so that is a big focus we are tyring to make right now. but just think if on average those 124 house holds had 2 people in them that would be 248 people, that is plenty to make a ward! not only a branch but a full ward! we have been able to meet with lots of them throughout the past week and we are hoping that our next appt's will go through. Parachute is where lots of the workers that work in the oil/gas fields live and within the past year or so more than half the town has moved out because the work slowed down with some new deal they did in the government is what i heard. it's crazy walking or driving through town and seeing so may empty trailers and homes it looks like it should be on a movie or something.

i think once the branch opens we will see lots more of these families become active because they wont have to drive 20 minutes to get to church. i was talking with the stake President the other day and he said it probably wont be open for the next couple months at least that's what they're hoping for. i really hope i'll be here to see it open!

i need to get going, the other Elders are ready to leave and we are going to grab some lunch. i hope to hear from everyone again soo! i'm trying to write y'all back as i get the time i'm writng little by little so i'll send those out when i finish. i hope you got the sd card or you should be getting it soon, it's nothing special. i miss you and love you!
love Randy








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It seems weird to be emailing on Monday, i'm just so used to Wednesday and it being the mid week kind of spliting the week in half but i guess it's nice since i just heard from you 5 days ago, what stinks is that this upcoming week will be a week and a half before i hear from you or am able to email back. so real quick before i forget i have been meaning to tell you for the past 4 weeks, but i chipped my tooth!ha it's nothing huge but chipped my front big tooth. when i was back in Glenwood we would go run on the track at the high school in the mornings and i was pumping up my football to carry as i ran and the needle broke off in the ball so i tried pulling it out and couldn't get it so i tried using my teeth and the dang thing chipped my tooth! i was so mad because i always remember you saying "dont use your teeth to open that, you'll chip them or break them" and sure enough it happened! once again i should of listened to my parents. ha

We still haven't found a place to live closer to Parachute, we're still trying to find something but i think the mission office kind of gave up and put it in our hands. so in my opinion we'll probably be staying here in Rifle 'til at least this next transfer, we are going to get some dressers from the members of the ward so we dont have to keep living out of the suit cases! we could stay in an apartment but the church is not wanting to make a 6 month lease they only want like a month or 2 month lease so not many people are wanting to do that, and the ones that are will charge way more than they want to pay for...

we're still not sure when they plan on opening the branch up, i guess the building that they were going to rent fell through so they are still looking for a place to meet. there is so many different stories going around saying it will open in mid November and others say not till early next year, so i guess we'll wait and see what happens. but it will be really cool knowing that at some point it will become a ward and like you said to know that i was one of the first missionaries to be there when it started. we have been able to contact a bunch of people this past week,

we weren't able to meet with Erik on Friday so we re-scheduled with an appt on tuesday. We talk 3 different lessons to our spanish investigators and i just sat there the whole time! lol my comp taught the whole time and i tried not to fall asleep! ha it is so weird being in a spanglish companionship, i could understand the gist of what they were saying but couldn't participate, so i think i'm giong to try and learn some spanish so i will be able to communicate or help at least some! i got 4 months so i might give it a shot.ha

we had 1 investigator to church this past sunday so that was nice. i'm really looking forward to this week, tomorrow we have that leadership trainining and then wednesday we have zone confrence so it will be good! and that's when i'll talk to President Maynes about the whole schooling thing.

the ward members here in the Rifle 1st ward are on top of missionary work it is so great! i think this ward has been the best one i've been in so far when it comes to member missionary work. not that the other wards i've been in weren't but they are great here! i have a good feeling that we will see lots of success here within the next few months! it still never ceases to amaze me how fast time goes by! i wish it would slow down some!

i cant wait to hear from you again even though it will be like 10 days, i hope all goes well with everyone between now and then. i look forward to getting a letter from EVERYONE soon! miss you so much! love you!!!

love Randy