"TEACHING" SISTER KEIR'S DOG

Mon 6/01/09 4:49 PM

Hi Amy,
Just wanted to send a few more pictures of the Elders trying to teach our dog some tricks. The Elders were over on Friday evening. We found out that since it was the end of the month they were out of food, money and mileage. They were full of faith that the Lord would provide...or they would fast:) No worries, they left well fed with t-bones and fresh baked peanut butter cookies. Sent a few frozen pizzas along with them too...just in case.

I'm happy to report that Elder Vogan's black eye is all healed. He related all his mishaps over dinner. Elder Vance was amazed and decided it is a good thing he is the driver:) Sounds like he's going to keep an extra eye on Elder Vogan's safety:)

Anyway, we may see them again on Wednesday. I called them today to make sure they had meals for the week and commented that I didn't see the missionary dinner sign up sheet at church yesterday. They told me the Mission Pres did away with the calendars and someone has been assigned to call members to set up appts for them. In the meantime, they didn't have any appts for this week. Again, they were not concerned and are certainly practicing the commandment to, "Take ye no thought what tomorrow will bring..." They are such faithful servants. I told them to come over tonight if nothing turned up. Well, they ended up with an appt. In the meantime I had called and told my mom and she will have them tomorrow night and us on Wed if no schedule is made.
Rest assured, we will see to it that they are well-nourished.

I hope all is well with you and your family.

Take care!
Leslie

P-DAYS--MUSIC AND SPORTS

Mon 6/01/09 9:42 AM
Hey guys! I got your letters last Tuesday right after we did emails, hopefully you got my letters by now! I will answer all your questions first, Dad. On P-days out here, we usually start the day, after morning study, by jamming with Elder Vance's keyboard and guitar. Haha, we've actually made up some pretty cool songs. The main things of the day to get done are emails, laundry, and shopping. And after we get all that done we play alot of sports for hours, alot of basketball and some soccer and frisbee. We will be getting a football today too so that will be cool. And then after dinner we finish up the day with proselyting.

It's wierd to see that alot of our investigators actually slowed down after getting dates. William and Ashley, we haven't been able to teach and they haven't been to church in awhile because William started getting really sick; he was thinking about going to the hospital yesterday. Steve and Shelley are not progressing at all anymore, which is also not cool. They were supposed to come to church the past couple weeks but didn't, so we may have to drop them. LJ Little is one that is still doing well; his entire family is active already though, but we count him as an investigator at church anyway. Nate is also doing some crazy stuff now. He was all set up and excited to be baptized on the 6th, but when we talked to him on the phone the other day he was irratated at us for telling people he had a date, for ridiculous reasons. But yeah, now he will most likely be postponing that date.

We met a new guy named John last week, though, and he is awesome. We will have a date for him next time we meet im sure. It's funny because his sister is a Lutherin minister, but she wants him to be a member of our church. I think she will end up joining our church too because she has nothing bad to say about it, and she told us things like: "Oh, I'd be the perfect little Mormon girl" and "A mom couldn't want anything more than for her daughther to marry a nice young LDS guy". We biked once last week for the first time, and it was pretty fun, and it made us pretty sore. Haha. Everything is working great though. I may request that "big butt girl seat" actually. That's cool that you got that Sci-Vation Extend stuff. I remember everyone on bb.com talking it up alot, i always wanted to try it.

I hit most of what i was going to write anyway while answering those questions, but one new thing is that i found out ill be speaking in our ward on Father's Day. The topic is: "I want to be like my father because..." So, I'll send you my talk in a few weeks. Okay well I'm getting off now, good luck with everything.
Love you! Elder Taylor Vogan

A CAR ACCIDENT AND A HEART ATTACK

Tue 5/26/09 7:52 AM
Hey, This week was pretty good, not quite as good as last week though. It's good to feel not so new. I was able to open up the pics this time, very cute; so are Jordan and her "goin' out" now? Man, it sounds like he's growing! Glad I never bullied him or anything or I'd be scared to go home. I don't have much of a workout routine right now, I'm just doing pushups for the days I have been out, adding one more each day - so hopefully ill be up to like 700 when i come home, haha. We will probably be moving in with some members who have an awesome home gym though too, so that will be nice.

We just put together our bikes last week, but we haven't used them yet. We will have to start using them this week though because we only have a couple miles left for the rest of the month with the car. I'm lucky that Elder Vance is a good mechanic, because I forgot everything you showed me about puting the bike together. I would have probably figured it out if I had to though. The weather is amazing her right now, warm with just enough breeze, and there aren't too many bugs out yet. You can continue to do email if you want, but its nice to get letters too. dearelder.com would be convenient for that, I'd think. I haven't received Hannah's and Jordan's letters yet, but hopefully this week.

So, one main highlight of this week was when we had to rescue Elder Caldwell and and his companion after they got into an accident- I'm sure you probably read about that yesterday in Elder Caldwell's email. They were fine, but the car had to be towed to the Chevy dealership. It was funny because that morning we were doing service with them at a food pantry, and we were just talking about the Elders who had gotten in accidents and how inconvenient it would be to be in one.

Another crazy thing that happened was on Sunday when we were out and about, actually on our way to a dinner. And we saw a lady pulled over with her hazards on, so Elder Vance decided we should go help her and we turned around and parked in a parking lot by where they were. When we walked down to the car, we realized there was a man in the back of the car groaning and kicking - he was having a heart attack. It was pretty scary. We asked the lady if there was anything we could do, but she just said she had already called 911 and they were on the way. So, we just decided to pray. As we knelt and prayed for the man (Ralph), one of the paramedics pulled up behind the lady's van. We she started checking out the man, and lady (Cheryl) walked around by us. We were really simpathetic to her, and asked again if there was anything we could do for her, and she just said "Just give me a hug", so I did. I wasn't sure if she would ever let go. Another ambulance pulled up, and the driver happened to be the second counselor in our ward's bishopbric who we had been talking to alot at church, and we could tell he was really surprised to see us standing there. Cheryl was pretty comforted and hopeful to hear that we prayed for her husband, and Elder Vance told her that he felt like everything would be alright. She called us "her angels", to one of the paremedics and to us. I didn't feel like we did anything, but I guess just to have us there was comforting to her. After they took her husband, we waited with her for her sister to come, and talked to her for a bit. We gave her our number to call us if she needed anything, so we hope she will. Okay, well I look foreward to more letters and emails from you guys. Love you! Elder Vogan

MUSKEGO LAKES

Tuesday-- 5/19/09
I came at the perfect time of the year! It's green, cool, not too humid - gorgeous area. The Muskego Lakes ward is the ward that the mission presidency is in. We are right down the street from the Mission home and office. I am very fortunate to be in this area to start my mission. We drive probably the nicest car in the mission, a dark grey '09 Malibu (from the picture that Sister Kier sent you), and our apartment is really nice too. We might be moving in with some members soon though, the Du Charmes. Brother Du Charme is the new ward mission leader, and the family is really cool. Their house has plenty of room for us too, I think we'll have our own part of the house to ourselves.

Oh and I haven't even talked about my companion. His name is Elder Vance, from Boise Idaho. He was a convert to the church at 18 years old, so that is cool to have that story when teaching. He is 22 now. He's really good at skateboarding, snowboarding, guitar, singing, rapping, and beat boxing, and I'm sure other stuff I don't know about yet. He was in two different bands back in Idaho that were pretty good, one Indy/rock band and one hip hop group. We work well together, and get along well.

Well, this first week went really well. I really liked meeting the members of the ward, and we were able to teach and invite alot of people. Everyone here is so nice. I don't think I've talked to any mean people yet. Everyone here seems is really religious too, mostly Catholic or Lutheran. Right now, we are teaching a little 9 year-old named LJ, a yound couple - Steve and Shelley, another young couple, William and Ashley, and a guy named Nate. And all these people have baptism dates within the next month, and we set them all since I've been here so that's really cool. Steve and Shelley, and Nate have all been meeting with missionaries for years and never committed, so it's crazy that I am here when that happens. We've met with a lot of other really nice people too, who we hope we can continue teaching. It's easy to teach when we have this fail-proof method to know if something is true: prayer. Most people really like it when they realize that we don't just want them to take our word for it, that we encourage them to sincerely pray and promise them that they will know for themselves if the things we teach are true or not. We aren't salesman, we are mailmen - delivering a message.

That blog looks really cool Mom, I like it! And just like Elder Caldwell said, I got to meet him last Thursday at transfer point! It was really cool to meet him, and we aren't too far away from each other so we might meet up on P-Day one of these weeks. Alright, well I hope you guys are doing well! Keep me up-to-date on how everything is going! Love you Elder Taylor Vogan

ELDER VOGAN MEETS HIS COUSIN

Milwaukee- May, 18, 2009--ELDER BRADY CALDWELL
‏Well everyone, I got transfered!! I have been in Racine for 6 months now. It was kinda sad to leave but I am kinda glad too. But guess where I got transfered to. Thats right, one of the coolest areas in the Mission. Milwaukee baby!!lol I am now covering 2 wards, the Brookfield ward and the Milwaukee ward. My comp is Elder Roberts and he has been out the same amount of time i have. He was also in my first district in the mission. So he is way cool. he is from Utah.

But my area covers Brookfield, part of New Berlin, part of Milwaukee, and some other small areas, and we live in and cover Wauwatosa! So we live next to the Wisconsin Medial College. So the Milwaukee ward is huge and is full of professional medical people and tons of young couples going to Medical school! They are hilarious, most of them are from Utah and have attended BYU. The Brookfield Ward is the ward that is full of Lawyers and stuff, it is the ritzy part of Milwaukee. It is pretty big too. We have a 2009 Malibu to ourselves, we have a bus pass so that we can go anywhere in Milwaukee county for free, and we have a dinner appointment every night! No exaggeration. lol There is tons of trees in this area, it is beautiful. We can see Downtown Milwaukee in the distance. We also have 8 hours of church on sunday because we got to all of each wards meetings. It was pretty crazy! lol It was pretty tiring. lol

oh oh, I met Elder Taylor Vogan at transfers! I got a photo with him, gave him a hug, and gave him one of my totes. lol He is in Milwaukee area also, in Muskego Lakes ward that covers Franklin Wisconsin and that area. He's way cool. I was telling everyone that he is my cousin (2nd) and they were like, no way. lol Love elder brady Caldwell

A MISSIONARY MOM IN WISCONSIN

Sun 5/17/09 6:06 PM
Hi Bro and Sis Vogan,
Your son and Elder Vance just left our house after dinner. I'm writing to tell you what a pleasure it is to have him here in Wisconsin! I can tell already...he is and will be a great missionary! And, since he is starting out with Elder Vance, I know he is well on his way to great missionary work.

I've attached a few pictures. Elder Vogan suggested we take it in front of the car so you could see it. Looking at the pictures now, I realized I didn't get much of the car. Guess I'm thinking like a missionary mom. I thought it would be better to focus on him so you could be assured he is well.
It is particularly excited to have Elder Vogan here because our son is serving in the Mesa mission. Apparently your son saw a picture of our son on my mom's refrigerator the other day and recognized him. He served most of his mission in Mesa and Apache Junction. This transfer he is in Paradise Valley. The people of AZ have been so good to our son (Zak). I sure hope we will do the same for Elder Vogan. I will see to it as long as he is in our ward:) Zak comes home at the end of August, so I hope they will have a chance to meet.

Thank you for raising such a wonderful and faithful son and for sharing him with us here in Wisconsin.

Love,
Leslie Keir