Mon 1/11/10 9:54 AM
Hello! Yeah, when I heard about the Cardinals and Packers playing, I had to represent the Cardinals. It was actually a good topic starter, so that I could tell them I was from AZ and here on a mission. Luckily, no one that we went to had the game on yesterday or I might have been tempted to watch some of it! Yeah, it is crazy to hear that Elder Kent will been home so soon! I bet his family is really excited, huh?
Our Ward mission leader actually told us that he is giving us his home gym on Wednesday night! It is a legit home gym with everything I could need, and we are helping him bring it over in a couple days - i am way excited! I guess they decided to buy a Bowflex, so they don't need the other one anymore.
Well this past week was really really good: 36 lessons taught, found 8 new investigators, and set one more baptism date with a girl named Jessica! Grandma told me that more success would flow after the holidays, and that was definitely true! Sister Louise Smotherman is still on track for baptism on the 23rd, but please keep her in your prayers. This will be the first baptism in more than a year for both of our areas here.
Thank you for your love and prayers. I miss you!
Love,
Elder Vogan
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
EXTREME MISSIONARY RESOLUTIONS
Mon 1/04/10 10:17 AM
Thank you for your email this week! I really liked hearing about the updates from my friends back home. It sounds like things will be completely different when I come home, hearing about how much things have already changed in the little time I’ve been out. If you get a chance, tell Breann and Andrea “Congratulations!” from me. And yeah, I am really excited to be an uncle too! It will be awesome to come home and meet my new little 9 month old niece or nephew! Good luck with the new diet! I am really interested in hearing about how that goes for you guys. And I am excited for the oranges to come as well!
So the most exciting thing for me that we did this past week was set some awesome, extreme missionary resolutions. I’ve always liked setting goals, and these are even better than goals. We are treating it almost like a covenant, so that we “have to” do it. We basically did what missionaries are supposed to do with setting weekly goals for lessons that we will teach, people that we will set baptism dates with, etc., but on top of that, we set “minimums” for what we have to do each day or week in order to push us to always be working well and effectively. And things like baptisms and baptism dates are not under our control for the most part, but the things we do have control over, we have committed to improve. This will be awesome to see things pick up out here after our increased efforts.
We did set another baptism date on Saturday with this 11 year-old kid named Cole. He is part of a less-active family, but they are really encouraging him to make the choice to be baptized. The only thing is with him, though, is that we aren’t going to baptize someone into inactivity. The whole family would need to commit to come back to church and be active, or else Cole would need to commit to coming and have some other members pick him up and bring him to church.
Nate is still where he was when I last talked to you about him. We have been able to go over and teach him, but no progress has been made yet. Louise Smotherman is still on track to be baptized on January 23rd, and we will be meeting with her this evening to make sure everything is still going well and encourage her.
So that is pretty much the main news for this week. The holidays were fun, but I’m glad they are over, so now we can get back to doing effective missionary work, and I can lose the weight I have put on. (I have actually already lost 4.5 lbs since Friday, so that’s great.) I love you very much, and I hope you have a happy and successful week!
Elder Vogan
Thank you for your email this week! I really liked hearing about the updates from my friends back home. It sounds like things will be completely different when I come home, hearing about how much things have already changed in the little time I’ve been out. If you get a chance, tell Breann and Andrea “Congratulations!” from me. And yeah, I am really excited to be an uncle too! It will be awesome to come home and meet my new little 9 month old niece or nephew! Good luck with the new diet! I am really interested in hearing about how that goes for you guys. And I am excited for the oranges to come as well!
So the most exciting thing for me that we did this past week was set some awesome, extreme missionary resolutions. I’ve always liked setting goals, and these are even better than goals. We are treating it almost like a covenant, so that we “have to” do it. We basically did what missionaries are supposed to do with setting weekly goals for lessons that we will teach, people that we will set baptism dates with, etc., but on top of that, we set “minimums” for what we have to do each day or week in order to push us to always be working well and effectively. And things like baptisms and baptism dates are not under our control for the most part, but the things we do have control over, we have committed to improve. This will be awesome to see things pick up out here after our increased efforts.
We did set another baptism date on Saturday with this 11 year-old kid named Cole. He is part of a less-active family, but they are really encouraging him to make the choice to be baptized. The only thing is with him, though, is that we aren’t going to baptize someone into inactivity. The whole family would need to commit to come back to church and be active, or else Cole would need to commit to coming and have some other members pick him up and bring him to church.
Nate is still where he was when I last talked to you about him. We have been able to go over and teach him, but no progress has been made yet. Louise Smotherman is still on track to be baptized on January 23rd, and we will be meeting with her this evening to make sure everything is still going well and encourage her.
So that is pretty much the main news for this week. The holidays were fun, but I’m glad they are over, so now we can get back to doing effective missionary work, and I can lose the weight I have put on. (I have actually already lost 4.5 lbs since Friday, so that’s great.) I love you very much, and I hope you have a happy and successful week!
Elder Vogan
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Mon 12/28/09 9:30 AM
It was great to talk to everyone and hear that everyone is doing well! I had a fun Christmas out here. I am excited about Whitney's 'baby alive'! Haha, that really was a surprise!
Well the warm weather was gone the day after I talked to you, and it has snowed a pretty good amount since then. We were in the Chilton area all day long, so we were planning on coming home to a big load to shovel. But cool enough, a young couple who live next door to us were already working on it for us! They said they had shoveled both of our driveways twice already during the day. They were really nice to do that for us. And we finished helping them with what was left.
Well that was only a few days ago that I spoke to you, so not too much has happened in that time. The coolest thing was that we were able to teach Emily Kufner's parents again on Saturday evening. She is the girl who recently was baptized down in Texas, and she is having us teach her parents, Tom and Pat. *You told me on the phone that you pray for the people that we teach, so please include Tom and Pat Kufner in those prayers - That they will take the things we teach to heart and have the sincere desire to know if it's true. Emily doesn't want anything more in life than for her family to accept the gospel as well.*
Well thank you again for the Christmas presents this year! I love everything. I hope you all have a great rest of your winter "break"!
Love,
Elder Vogan
It was great to talk to everyone and hear that everyone is doing well! I had a fun Christmas out here. I am excited about Whitney's 'baby alive'! Haha, that really was a surprise!
Well the warm weather was gone the day after I talked to you, and it has snowed a pretty good amount since then. We were in the Chilton area all day long, so we were planning on coming home to a big load to shovel. But cool enough, a young couple who live next door to us were already working on it for us! They said they had shoveled both of our driveways twice already during the day. They were really nice to do that for us. And we finished helping them with what was left.
Well that was only a few days ago that I spoke to you, so not too much has happened in that time. The coolest thing was that we were able to teach Emily Kufner's parents again on Saturday evening. She is the girl who recently was baptized down in Texas, and she is having us teach her parents, Tom and Pat. *You told me on the phone that you pray for the people that we teach, so please include Tom and Pat Kufner in those prayers - That they will take the things we teach to heart and have the sincere desire to know if it's true. Emily doesn't want anything more in life than for her family to accept the gospel as well.*
Well thank you again for the Christmas presents this year! I love everything. I hope you all have a great rest of your winter "break"!
Love,
Elder Vogan
MERRY CHRISTMAS--MAY WE FOLLOW 'THE SHEPHERD' & WORSHIP 'THE KING'
Mon 12/21/09 10:38 AM
Thank you for the Christmas presents! We were able to light up a third of our front window with those lights, and next to our tree it looks pretty good, haha. I only opened the fudge, the photo album, and whatever wasn’t wrapped. So, I’ll have some other presents to open on Christmas morning. Yeah, I do get to call you! I don’t want to call too early because I don’t want to make you miss the annual Christmas breakfast. So, I’ll plan on calling between noon and 1 pm Wisconsin time. Hopefully that will be good for you. If not, I will try some cell phones.
Our zone conference on Wednesday went really well and was really uplifting. The rest of our week went pretty well. We had exchanges Wednesday night to Thursday night, and I was with Elder Sharrah spending time up in Green Bay. He is a Spanish missionary, so I had a chance to brush up on my espanol. It was fun, and we had some really cool appointments. We also spent some time on UWGB’s campus with the sister missionaries and some other elders from Green Bay letting people know about the LDSSA institute group and handing out hot chocolate and cookies. That was a lot of fun. On Saturday night, we went caroling with some members of the Chilton branch and handed out copies of Mister Kruger’s Christmas. That was a fun experience, even though we weren’t out too long doing it. It felt like straight out of a Christmas movie, walking in snow while it’s snowing on our heads and singing to people. Afterward, we went back to our (former) branch mission leader’s house and ate cookies and drank hot cocoa. We just got a brand new branch mission leader on Sunday, and he will do a good job, so we are excited.
Well something I learned at zone conference I will finish by telling you. Isn’t it interesting that shepherds in their fields were told about the birth of the Son of God, who would be The Great Shepherd. And isn’t it also interesting that great kings from the East would travel great distances to present gifts to the baby who would be the greatest of all, the King of Kings. As we celebrate this Christmas season, let us follow our Shepherd and worship our King!
Merry Christmas,
Elder Vogan
Thank you for the Christmas presents! We were able to light up a third of our front window with those lights, and next to our tree it looks pretty good, haha. I only opened the fudge, the photo album, and whatever wasn’t wrapped. So, I’ll have some other presents to open on Christmas morning. Yeah, I do get to call you! I don’t want to call too early because I don’t want to make you miss the annual Christmas breakfast. So, I’ll plan on calling between noon and 1 pm Wisconsin time. Hopefully that will be good for you. If not, I will try some cell phones.
Our zone conference on Wednesday went really well and was really uplifting. The rest of our week went pretty well. We had exchanges Wednesday night to Thursday night, and I was with Elder Sharrah spending time up in Green Bay. He is a Spanish missionary, so I had a chance to brush up on my espanol. It was fun, and we had some really cool appointments. We also spent some time on UWGB’s campus with the sister missionaries and some other elders from Green Bay letting people know about the LDSSA institute group and handing out hot chocolate and cookies. That was a lot of fun. On Saturday night, we went caroling with some members of the Chilton branch and handed out copies of Mister Kruger’s Christmas. That was a fun experience, even though we weren’t out too long doing it. It felt like straight out of a Christmas movie, walking in snow while it’s snowing on our heads and singing to people. Afterward, we went back to our (former) branch mission leader’s house and ate cookies and drank hot cocoa. We just got a brand new branch mission leader on Sunday, and he will do a good job, so we are excited.
Well something I learned at zone conference I will finish by telling you. Isn’t it interesting that shepherds in their fields were told about the birth of the Son of God, who would be The Great Shepherd. And isn’t it also interesting that great kings from the East would travel great distances to present gifts to the baby who would be the greatest of all, the King of Kings. As we celebrate this Christmas season, let us follow our Shepherd and worship our King!
Merry Christmas,
Elder Vogan
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