EASTER ZONE CONFERENCES

Mom,

Okay, I'll be looking for the package and the pants! Thank you! I'm glad to hear things went pretty well this week for the family; Happy Birthday tomorrow for Kyle! That's really cool to hear about Jared's talk in church yesterday - Wow, I will try my best to live up to what he said about me. I'm so excited for Jared and Jordan to go on missions; it is the best experience! The reason sometimes it seems like I ignore questions or comments about home is because I don't want to think too much about coming home, I love it so much here. How awesome to hear that Charli is starting to crawl and pull herself up on things! I bet she's growing up a really cute little toddler. Speaking of which, I haven't seen any pictures of her since I left - maybe that's something to put in my box..? I hope there isn't anything too serious with Dad's knee. That's no fun.

This was a great week! Work-wise, we hardly did anything in our own area because it was zone conference week. We had zone conferences throughout the mission Tuesday through Friday, and they were the best zone conferences I remember going to. The training we did for each included an Easter egg hunt, and that got everyone involved. It was about finding new people to teach: "He that diligently seeketh shall find..." (1 Ne. 10:19) In order to get to each conference, we woke up really early each day to travel, so I am still a bit exhausted. After each, we spent time with elders from the zones where the conferences were held. Wednesday we were in Wisconsin Rapids and Friday and Saturday we got to spend time in Manitowoc. It was great to be back to those areas and see the people I love from those areas. Colleen was interviewed for baptism Friday night, and she is good to good for this Saturday! It is looking like I will be transferred a week from this Thursday. I'd be good to stay or leave - wherever the Lord wants me. President Jones doesn't want to have assistants "die" (go home) in that responsibility, and usually a one transfer area at the end of the mission isn't a good thing either.

I really can't think of anything else to tell you besides that things are going great here, and I love you! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Vogan

GLORIA GOT BAPTIZED!!

Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 Dad, I didn't get a letter from Mom yet, so I'll just reply to yours this week. Yes, he said the actual "F" bomb, haha. Definitely a classic teaching appointment. Thank you for your nice comments as well! And thank you for the money in my account - I only have one and a half suits that I have to wear (I forgot one of my suit's pants at home when I came back), so I might spend a lot of that money today on a new suit. Mens Wearhouse is having a "buy one, get one free" deal on suits and Elder Lester really needs one too. So, I hope that's alright! And congrats to Jason on the quick engagement! No, I won't be competing with anyone to see how fast I can get married when I get home. I do look forward to it though. My went was awesome! Gloria from Wausau got baptized! I feel like if that was the only thing I got to be a part of in coming back on my mission, I would be worth it. Elder Lester and I were scheduled to be on exchanges with the Wausau zone leaders anyway that day, so I worked out perfectly for us to be up there for it. She asked Elder Lester to baptize her, and the Spirit was very strong during it. We all had tears in our eyes when he stated her name as part of the ordinance. She has good friends in the ward from the Relief Society now, so that has really helped in her conversion. So after all those ups and downs, from discontinuing teaching her to having her call wanting to be taught - she finally had an experience that impressed her so much that she'll never be able to deny the divinity of the Book of Mormon, no matter what other concerns might come up. On one of her "down" days, the elders were teaching her from the Book of Mormon, and because she was not open, she help up her Bible and said, "I have a Bible! I have a Bible! I don't need any other bible!" After testifying, the elders saw her hardened heart, and they told her that she should call them again if she wanted to learn from them. The next day started out terrible, and she was feeling horrible. Even after being "dropped", the Lord guided her to read in the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi chapter 29."And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible." And not only the words from the page that were almost her exact words the night previous, but the feelings in her heart chastened her intensely, and she knew she had made a mistake. She still doesn't know or understand everything, but through these experiences, she opened her heart to what her Heavenly Father wanted, and she knew she was supposed to be baptized. So, a former devout anti-Mormon is now a member of the Church! She told me, "Elder Vogan, the only reason I'm doing this is because the Lord told me that's what He wanted me to do. The same voice that has guided and directed me throughout my life, told me that I needed to do this." And it definitely wasn't easy for her! But I'm glad I got to be here for it. Since her confirmation, she has felt the peace we promised her and a greater abundance of the Spirit. I can't wait to her about her experience going to the temple! We had a great week otherwise. We were able to teach many lessons, and seek to find more people to teach. We have zone conferences this week, so that will be really busy. Tomorrow through Friday, we will be driving to different parts of Wisconsin for them. One of them will actually be in Wisconsin Rapids, and after our conference in Green Bay, we will get to spend the rest of the day in Manitowoc! It will be great going back to areas I've served. Well, that's all I have for this week. I hope all of you have a wonderful week! Love, Elder Vogan

HE WAS SO EXCITED, HE DIDN'T KNOW HE HAD SWORN

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 09:51:38 My family, I am really glad to hear that things are going well at home! I had a weird nagging feeling on Thursday night that something bad happened at home, so I was hoping that was just to help me remember how much I love my family and to express that: Dad, I am grateful for how much you love and support me as a missionary and family. For all of your effort to teach us righteously and provide for our needs. Mom, thank you for loving and serving us so much, even while I seemed so ungrateful. You are an angel. Whitney, I am so happy for you to be the cute mom you are. Thank you for being such a great big sister. I am excited to see Charli on her first birthday! And I am grateful for the wonderful father Kyle is and for the humor he has brought to the family. Jordan, you are my best friend. I am excited for all that you are doing to improve, and I'm excited to hang out with you again this summer. Hannah, I love you. It's so fun to see how much you are growing up through your emails and to hear about the fun you are having. And I'm grateful for Megan and the blessing she is in our family, to help us enjoy to small things and to grow in patience. And Jared, you are basically part of the family too now. You are awesome. Thanks for helping Jordan stay out of trouble. Overall, I had a very good week! Conference was amazing! There are too many good talks to say which were my favorites, but Elder Oaks, Elder Robbins, and President Uchtdorf from priesthood stick out in my mind and I took many notes through those talks. It sounds like I need to get married pretty quick when I get home, huh? We had an excellent zone leader council training on Friday about "finding", and the missionaries are getting excited. The weather warming up a little bit helps that too. Speaking of weather, 100 degrees is intense! We are just excited to be able to take off our coats. Our investigators are doing well. We had an awesome exchange with the Green Bay elders after zone leader council in which we were able to invite 2 people to be baptized, and they accepted. We also found 3 new investigators with them for them to teach. 2 of them were a nice couple who actually fed us dinner! They even had caffeine-free mountain dew. Who knew there was such a thing? One of the guys we invited to be baptized responded just the way the people responded in Mosiah 18:10-11. He literally clapped his hands for joy at the idea of having the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Except, instead of saying, "This is the desire of my heart!" he said, "@#$% Yeah!" So that was pretty classic. Haha. He was so excited, he didn't know he had sworn. Before that, he kept telling us that there was a presence or a spirit in the room, and it reminded him of an experience he had had several years earlier, which originally brought him to know God. Well the office sisters are anxious to get on the computer now, so I'll close this week's letter by once again saying that I love you so much! I love the Gospel and am so humbled to have it in my life and to have the amazing opportunity of sharing it with my brothers and sisters here in Wisconsin. I'll talk to you next week! Love, Elder Vogan

"I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES...."

Mon. 3/28/11 Family, It's always great to hear from you each week, although the weeks are going by way too fast. I don't even want to think about you already having my flight plans, I just got back out here! But yeah, I can just fly again, it would be a really long drive. I'll need to have some money in my account in July to pay to ship my bike home and souvenirs I want to keep. That's great to hear that you are going back to school, Mom! (By the way, I never mentioned what I decided I'd major in: Physiology and Developmental Biology. When I read that as an option for a major, I got excited, so I'm going with it. I can go almost every direction I've considered with that degree.) And good to hear Dad has a lot of work lined up for the week! I'll be praying that Megan feels better soon and that no one else gets sick. 106 degrees is scary high.. What a great week this week! We had a specialized training for all the sister missionaries in the mission and that was a lot of fun to be a part of. We got to sing "As Sisters in Zion" - one of my favorites. We also even got a Cuddly Cousins stuffed animal from one of the sisters who did a training! All my expectations of a sisters conference were met. Haha. It was really one of the most spiritual trainings I've been apart of though, which is probably because of their greater maturity and love. Also, we had a great day on Wednesday: We taught two sisters, Tia and Takira. We had a member bring them down to the church and we had a chapel tour lesson with them. We had originally planned to teach them about the Plan of Salvation, but we couldn't seem to start into that. The Spirit was there and lead us to teach about Jesus Christ. At one point, we walked into the chapel, and talked about the Sacrament meeting being the most important meeting in the Church. Our member, Richard, started to bear his testimony of the hymns, and as he did so, I picked up one of the hymnals and flipped it open to show them. I flipped right to "I know that My Redeemer Lives". I felt impressed to ask Tia how she felt about the Savior, and she confessed she wasn't sure she believed in Him. I then read the first verse, and the feeling when I read "..My hungry soul to feed" was intense. I knew for sure at that time that she was hungry, and that she felt like something was missing in her life. And I told her of that, and each of us testified of how her void would be filled by the Gospel and through developing her relationship with Christ through prayer and repentance. When we got to the baptism font, we discussed what it means to be baptized, and we invited both of them to prepare for that day (April 16th), and they accepted that date and commitment. Both of them were at church yesterday and loved it! We also taught a young Hmong single adult girl who had been less active, and she came to church yesterday as well! Also yesterday, the two other people we are teaching who are preparing for baptism (Akilah and Colleen) both made it to church as well! Akilah had driven 18 hours straight coming home from a vacation in Florida, and she still made the decision to come to church despite how incredibly tired she was, and that she was an hour drive from church. She loved it and felt very comfortable. We have a lesson to see her today with our friend Jared from the ward. So there's some highlights from the week! I hope you all have a wonderful week! Love, Elder Vogan

TRANSFER DUTIES--ALL WENT WELL

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011
Family,
This past week was intense, but everything is going great for us! Having Elder Cottle transfer so soon, I was a little bit anxious for how transfers would go and all the other "beginning of the transfer duties". He was very in control and on top of everything, so I wasn't sure I knew how to do all the tasks, but all went well! Elder Lester is a fast learner too, and he's starting to get the hang of the different things we do.

Wisconsin is starting to thaw! We can hardly see any snow down where we are, and we had our first non-freezing rain of the year yesterday. It looks like Spring is almost here! Not quite 80's yet though. That's nice you were able to go to Las Sendas ward and be there for Austin Maxwell's homecoming. And it's great to hear things are going well at home!

This transfer we got in some amazing new missionaries. We take out the new missionaries to teach people on the streets nearby the University of Wisconsin campus here in Milwaukee, and we have two new missionaries assigned to speak Hmong who are incredible. They cleared "the bar" by a long shot. Contacting with them, they didn't seem at all like new missionaries in the way they taught, but they had the excitement and fire of a new, "green" missionary, and they were actually jogging to catch up to talk to people. It's easy to tell when a missionary understands and has a testimony of the Gospel, and how much love he has, by how urgent he is to share it with those around him. It was really motivating to see them work, and I'm excited to see the miracles they perform out here.

Well I love you! I hope you have a wonderful week, and I hope you fill your days with not the "good" or "better" things, but the "best" things.

Love,
Elder Vogan

ELDER LESTER AGAIN--THIRD TIMES A CHARM!

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:20:50 -
Family,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY, MOM! I'm glad that you had a good birthday!

I did have a good week! It's good to hear that things are going well there! 80's now huh? We are happy with the high 30's and 40's that we've been getting.. haha. That's great to hear about the missionary success that you are able to see with the Tibbetts' friend and Dad's former assistant. The Gospel is true, and the blessing affixed to helping others to find it is a joy and satisfaction that comes from nothing else. I am so happy and humbled to be serving a mission, and words can't describe how grateful I am that I am able to be here right now.

I did get the apartment contract sent in on Saturday. The fax machine here in the office said that it was failing to send, so I scanned it to the computer and emailed it to MaryAnn. It would be great if you, Mom, can verify that it was received. Thank you! You don't need to worry about my knee; I'm doing great. I can even jog and do leg workouts. I still may get another MRI before I come home just to be sure though. Tucker's gone.. can't say I'm surprised in the least bit.. haha. (If you look at my past email when you were first considering it.) It's great to hear about Hannah and Jordan and there volleyball success! I do hope that I get to see some footage of them playing. That's funny to hear about Jordan's fan club; I bet that was awesome for him.

Things were good this week. Elder Lester is down in the office with us today. He's my new companion! Again! Three times the charm, I guess. But I'm really excited! Out of 130 missionaries, it's amazing that I could serve with someone more than once or twice. But he would be my choice of my companions to be with multiple times. It was awesome serving with Elder Cottle. I learned a lot from him, and I will miss him. He'll be heading to Wausau to replace Elder Lester on Wednesday. When we went to pick up Elder Lester, they had an appointment with Gloria set up. The same day that Elder Lester found out that he'd be transferring down, before he ever tried to contact her to say "good bye", she called and asked for the missionaries to come teach her again. She said that since she dismissed the missionaries, they had been weighing heavily on her heart, and she had felt very depressed and sad about every aspect of her life. So, we had five missionaries and a member with us in her home on Saturday. It was a wonderful experience with the Spirit with discernment and inspiration. I knew, through the Spirit, that behind all her little hold-ups and road blocks that keep her from progressing and being baptized, the only real thing keeping her from it, is her fear of what her family and other people will think of her if she joined the Church. It's amazing how debilitating this type of pride is, and how much it can keep people from progressing. I think most of us need to battle and get past that fear in our lives.

Other than that experience, we had a pretty busy week. We had a leadership training on Friday, and we participated in the singles ward talent show doing a skit. It was really funny. We have really been promoting the new mormon.org site to members, so I'll encourage all of you at home to check it out and create a profile as well. I'll be working on my own hopefully today. This week will be busy too, with transfers and all the new and departing missionary meetings. I like busy weeks though. It will be crazy with Elder Cottle leaving so soon, so now I'll be responsible for everything going on and to help Elder Lester learn the ropes.

Thank you for your love and support! Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Vogan

TWO PEOPLE PREPARING FOR BAPTISM

Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011

Mom,
I did get the oranges, and they do taste delicious! That was the right amount that you sent too; none will go bad. You can go ahead and sign me up for the room with Brady. Even if I do need surgery again, recovery for meniscus surgery is only a few weeks, so I'll still be good to go in September. I'll be released July 21st.

It's good to hear things are going well! (Aside from the usual trouble-makers) I hope things get figured out with Megan and Tucker. It's good to hear about Jordan's volleyballin'; please keep updating me on how that is going! And I love to hear about Hannah too!

This past week was good. We have two people preparing for baptism, but neither will be before April. Akilah is a new investigator, and we had a great lesson with her last Monday. We brought Matt with us, who was confirmed in church the day before. He was able to look her in the eyes and testify of the gift and power of the Holy Ghost. He told her, "I know this is true because I know how I felt yesterday before my confirmation, and I know how I've felt since." Matt is an example of how to "receive the Holy Ghost". During and after the lesson, he talked about how he felt like he was teaching himself - Akilah was responding and feeling the same way he did as he was just starting to be taught. We taught her about the Restoration of the Priesthood, and we ended up giving her a priesthood blessing, which we don't usually do during a first lesson. No two lessons are ever the same because everyone's needs are so different. So, at the end of the lesson, despite her fears and anxieties of praying aloud, we knelt and she offered a sweet, sincere prayer. It was answered as the Spirit filled the room, and she felt a peace that she had never felt before and wished she could always feel. She knew it was right and she needed to be baptized.

We also had two trainings this week, one for the Hmong elders and one for the zone leaders. They went well. During our zone leader council, we put our personal training skills to use and did a fun role play for them. We also had two exchanges with both Milwaukee zone leaders.

Thank you for your love and prayers of support. I love you!

Elder Vogan