Mon 1/25/10 12:46 PM
It was good to get a couple more emails this week than usual! Thanks Hannah and Whitney! Those pictures of pretty lady Megan were really cute!
Congrats on the success with the diet, Mom and Dad! I am glad to hear that it worked well for you. The oranges are perfect and delicious! Thank you! And I am glad to hear Dad's seminars are going better as well!
My new companion, Elder Lester, is a stud missionary! He definitely lives up to the hype, haha. I have already learned so much from him, and we get along really well. He grew up in South Carolina in a part-member family. He and his mom are the only active members. He has only been out for 3 months, but he seems like he could be ready to go home. I am excited to see how much success we will have together!
That's good that you got Sister Wilson's email. The Wilsons are awesome! So the story of our "secret" baptism... (It probably won't have the same impact it had for us, since you guys thought she would be baptized the whole time, but it's still cool) : So, Tuesday afternoon, we had Sister Smotherman's interview, and she was solid and ready to go until the very end when she denied to her daughter that she was getting baptized on Saturday. We were really confused and thought she might just not have wanted to have her daughter there or something. So, that night and the next day we tried to call and get that straight that it was going to be on Saturday (because that is why our district leader came all the way down from Green Bay to interview her that week). They didn't answer, so I was getting pretty anxious about it. Finally, Brother Smotherman called and said that because of his recent knee surgery, the doctor didn't want him to get his knee wet or put any weight on it, so they chose to push the date. And they decided that Feb. 20th would be good. I said, "Wow, a whole month out?" And it was their choice, so that was the decision.
So we went throughout the rest of the week, until Sunday afternoon at 4:30, thinking that she was not going to be baptized until (at least) the 20th of February. We had lunch after church with Bishop Jones and his family and talked a little bit about what was going on with Sister Smotherman, and Bishop said he wanted to come with us to our next visit with her. When he drove us back to our car, which was at the church, I asked him if he wanted to go visit them only with us, or if he would go without us first. And he said, "Ya know, maybe I'll just stop by right now." So, two hours later we got a message from him that said, "Call me back as soon as possible... Meet me at the church at 7:30 tonight. Sister Smotherman is going to be baptized tonight... Don't tell anyone this is happening. I repeat, don't tell anyone... until then just pray that everything works out smoothly. And afterwards you can go back to your apartment and shout for joy." So we got that message and were like, "Holy man, I can't believe it". But we couldn't say anything around our dinner hosts, so we just kept it inside till we got in the car to leave. We found out from Bishop that the real reason for postponing the date was anxiety and not wanting to be the center of attention or in front of large groups. (we kinda knew that already though) So, it happened! with us, Bishop and Sister Jones and their youngest daughter, and the Smothermans with their son, Dillon. And we went to the Wilson's to celebrate. (Bishop told us that it wasn't as big of a deal about telling people after the babtism).
So, I hope you felt some of the rollercoaster we felt from this story. I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Love, Elder Vogan
Monday, January 25, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
BAPTISM SCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY
Mon 1/18/10 12:13 PM
Hey family! Another pretty good week has past fast. Yes, I am for sure staying in Two Rivers, Manitowoc, and Chilton for at least one more transfer. Elder Roberts will be leaving on Thursday, and from a sneak-peak email from President Barrett, he found out that he gets to go to Madison - which is where he has been wanting to serve his entire mission. I would love to serve there as well. So yeah, you can send the package directly to Two Rivers. Thank you!
Other than transfers, our biggest excitement is Sister Smotherman's baptism this Saturday! She doesn't want it to be big at all; she isn't comfortable in front of crowds. But nevertheless, it will be awesome! We will have her program put together really soon, and our district leader, Elder Eastman, will be coming down tomorrow to interview her! Thank you for your prayers, and please continue those!
Nate hasn't made any progress at all since before I spoke to you on Christmas. In fact, we actually haven't seen him since at a week and a half ago... I thought I'd update you on that though, since I know you knew about him.
Other than that, all that I can think that is worth sharing is that we have a few more 'future new members' that we are trying diligently to work with: Cole, Jessica, and Sister Li's family - Sang Thong, Nicole, Hope, and Angel. If President is right with what he told me in my email today, my new campanion and I will work together well and be able to help these people and others to progress well and help them make that choice to be baptized and have all the joy that comes from that.
Love you! Have a great week! Hope your voice gets better, Dad!
Elder Vogan
Hey family! Another pretty good week has past fast. Yes, I am for sure staying in Two Rivers, Manitowoc, and Chilton for at least one more transfer. Elder Roberts will be leaving on Thursday, and from a sneak-peak email from President Barrett, he found out that he gets to go to Madison - which is where he has been wanting to serve his entire mission. I would love to serve there as well. So yeah, you can send the package directly to Two Rivers. Thank you!
Other than transfers, our biggest excitement is Sister Smotherman's baptism this Saturday! She doesn't want it to be big at all; she isn't comfortable in front of crowds. But nevertheless, it will be awesome! We will have her program put together really soon, and our district leader, Elder Eastman, will be coming down tomorrow to interview her! Thank you for your prayers, and please continue those!
Nate hasn't made any progress at all since before I spoke to you on Christmas. In fact, we actually haven't seen him since at a week and a half ago... I thought I'd update you on that though, since I know you knew about him.
Other than that, all that I can think that is worth sharing is that we have a few more 'future new members' that we are trying diligently to work with: Cole, Jessica, and Sister Li's family - Sang Thong, Nicole, Hope, and Angel. If President is right with what he told me in my email today, my new campanion and I will work together well and be able to help these people and others to progress well and help them make that choice to be baptized and have all the joy that comes from that.
Love you! Have a great week! Hope your voice gets better, Dad!
Elder Vogan
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
OFF TO A GREAT START IN 2010
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
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
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
Monday, December 14, 2009
WINTER WONDERLAND, INDEED
Mon 12/14/09 11:26 AM
Hello,
Yeah, this week was a new experience for me! I actually really enjoyed getting snow dumped on us. Tuesday was when the blizzard hit, and it snowed all night long and through a lot of Wednesday as well. We weren’t hit quite as bad as people further from the lake, but we still got a good 10-12 inches of snow. And that was plenty to get us shoveling. Wednesday morning we woke up with the power out and the house really cold. It went out at about the time we went to bed, and it turned back on about 30 minutes after we woke up, so that worked out well. Then we decided to start shoveling first thing, and helped 3 of our neighbors shovel their driveways as well. In total, we spent more than 5 hours shoveling throughout the day. We had 3 people from the ward call for us to help, and some of their neighbors as well. I enjoyed it, and it was a great workout. If it snowed like that every week, I would get pretty ripped. I’m sure Grandma Sharon had even more fun than we did, though. She wrote me and said that she got two feet of snow and went two days without power! Wow, that would be intense. I’m sure Elder Molano will write about that to his family.
That’s good to hear that you got an offer on the Las Sendas house, finally! Hope everything works out with that! I didn’t get your Christmas packages yet because the office is holding them until zone conference on Wednesday. So, maybe I should have just had you send them directly to me… oh well, I’ll learn patience. I hope I get one of the family Christmas letters that you are sending out!
To answer your question, Dad, I don’t hear too often what is going on in my last area, but I do know that Ralph’s daughter (“heart-attack guy’s daughter”) stopped investigating because of her husband. I still think things will work out in the future with her. And Ralph and Cheryl took a copy of the Book of Mormon from me and said they would attend church before I left, but I’m not sure if anything more happened with them.
Well, it might be the weather, or the season, but the work is slowing a bit in the area. We are doing our best to change that, but this past week wasn’t the best. Hopefully, zone conference this week will give us the push of faith and new skills to help things pick back up. A lot of the people who we thought would be progressing for different reasons haven’t been. We still have Nate with a baptism date, so at least that is working out. We will make this week better.
Hope you continue to have a wonderful Christmas season!
Love you!
Elder Vogan
Hello,
Yeah, this week was a new experience for me! I actually really enjoyed getting snow dumped on us. Tuesday was when the blizzard hit, and it snowed all night long and through a lot of Wednesday as well. We weren’t hit quite as bad as people further from the lake, but we still got a good 10-12 inches of snow. And that was plenty to get us shoveling. Wednesday morning we woke up with the power out and the house really cold. It went out at about the time we went to bed, and it turned back on about 30 minutes after we woke up, so that worked out well. Then we decided to start shoveling first thing, and helped 3 of our neighbors shovel their driveways as well. In total, we spent more than 5 hours shoveling throughout the day. We had 3 people from the ward call for us to help, and some of their neighbors as well. I enjoyed it, and it was a great workout. If it snowed like that every week, I would get pretty ripped. I’m sure Grandma Sharon had even more fun than we did, though. She wrote me and said that she got two feet of snow and went two days without power! Wow, that would be intense. I’m sure Elder Molano will write about that to his family.
That’s good to hear that you got an offer on the Las Sendas house, finally! Hope everything works out with that! I didn’t get your Christmas packages yet because the office is holding them until zone conference on Wednesday. So, maybe I should have just had you send them directly to me… oh well, I’ll learn patience. I hope I get one of the family Christmas letters that you are sending out!
To answer your question, Dad, I don’t hear too often what is going on in my last area, but I do know that Ralph’s daughter (“heart-attack guy’s daughter”) stopped investigating because of her husband. I still think things will work out in the future with her. And Ralph and Cheryl took a copy of the Book of Mormon from me and said they would attend church before I left, but I’m not sure if anything more happened with them.
Well, it might be the weather, or the season, but the work is slowing a bit in the area. We are doing our best to change that, but this past week wasn’t the best. Hopefully, zone conference this week will give us the push of faith and new skills to help things pick back up. A lot of the people who we thought would be progressing for different reasons haven’t been. We still have Nate with a baptism date, so at least that is working out. We will make this week better.
Hope you continue to have a wonderful Christmas season!
Love you!
Elder Vogan
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