Happy Birthday Elder! plus Leadership Training & lessons by candlelight

Well hey errryone!

First off thank you so much for all the Birthday packages and wishes and all that jazz! That was pretty dang awesome! It made me feel pretty special and the week went alot better because of it! Haha my birthday was good! It was just another day at work and really didn't feel much like a birthday but thats ok! haha I think that's how they are suppose to feel on the mission! I think because of that I didn't get home sick or anything like that! Haha on my birthday I was in Caldwell Idaho for leadership training and President Cannon made me stand up in front of everyone and have them sing happy birthday.. I did not want that AT ALL but it was ok :) haha I guess it was kinda like a missionary bday party because I got to see a bunch of my friends from around the Nampa Idaho area. Being 20,now I feel a complete increase of knowledge and maturity... :) or something like that ;0 haha actually I feel pretty much nothing like most bdays!

Anyways this week we didn't get as much teaching done because we were gone all day on Thursday and most of Friday too... But the Training was super fun! We learned a lot of pretty basic things! It was cool though because it was only the leadership so there was a bunch of really experienced missionaries there! haha I know we aren't suppose to compare but I got called on to do a role play in front of everyone with my comp for the day Elder Cellua and we pretty much killed it! haha ofcourse everyone sounds like a really good teacher in a role play. Teaching a real person with the guidance of the spirit is a whole other ball park! anyways so the meeting was fun and  I learned a bunch! I got to see Elder Bloomfield!! holy cow I've missed that guy!  After the training we went on mass exchanges to kinda get a feel of what other missionaries do in their areas. I went to Marsing and Homdale Idaho! haha those are 2 extremely redneck little towns lol! I went out with Elder Cellua and Nelson. E Cellua is freakin awesome! he's from Figi and he plays for the Figi national rugby team! Holy cow he's a spiritual giant and is seriously one of the funniest guys I've met! haha when he first came out he called deer American sheep lol! anyways it was fun and I learned alot from him! Elder Nelson is also a super nice guy and a very hard worker. So ya we worked in that area all day on Thursday and Friday morning we met back up and talked about all of the things we learned and our experiences. Haha and then we drove for 3 1/2 hours to get back to Lagrande... The Zone leaders picked us up half way so it was fun to get to spend some time with them! I met Elder Urmsten the first day in the field and he's going home in 2 weeks! time fly's!

Well as far as other things this week we had some good lessons for sure! haha we had a really good lesson with Tulley on Tuesday and we taught him the restoration and how to pray. He said that he always goes over his day at night before sleep and asks for things about tomorrow anyways, he says he's just been kinda throwing it out there hoping that someone is listening and cares!!!! so ya we taught him about prayer and he was super excited to try it out!! He came to church on Sunday to!! Haha after the lesson we ate a birthday cake Anne made for me lol she's so funny! it was pretty awesome to have someone actually remember and care about ya, sometimes people just see missionary and don't take the time to get to know you as a person.

Anyways we had a really good talk with James about baptism and what he needs to do to get ready. Right now he's just scared about what his family will think. We challenged him to pray every morning and night for strength and to fast on Sunday for answers.

Record setting week!

Welllllll hey there all of yous guys!

    Holy cow this week has been great! I think skypeing was a boost that just slingshoted us forward for the rest of the week! I love and miss you guys a bunch though! We taught 32 lessons this week!!! thats my mission record so far! It was so awesome we had a ton of just amazing and powerful experiences! We also found a few people who are just so incredible and ready to accept the Gospel in their lives!! on top of all of that good stuff we were also able to do a bunch of awesome service!!! I talk more in detail  in just a second! It was just a crazy busy week and I loved every second! We got to help and talk to soooo many people! Its really pretty incredible when you take a step back at the end of a hard day's work and you try and think about all of the people that you were able to talk to and help! It like one of the best feelings ever!!

"Meditating on the Mountain"

   Ok so awesome lesson experiences for the week! For starters Suzanne!! such an amazing lesson! We were going to finish teaching her the Plan of Salvation but as we stared talking and awensering some of her questions we moved in a different direction. We taught about the Holy Ghost and how we feel it, I had the Idea to describe the feeling of warmth and tell her how the Holy Ghost can calm our minds when we are troubled and Sister Royer (a member who was at the lesson) said the exact same thing right before I said it and read the same scripture I was going to read!! Suzanne started crying and said that the past week she was having some mental issues where she got really down on herself and was wondering if all of the heartache is worth it.. She said as soon as she started thinking like that she prayed and her mind was calmed and the most incredible feeling of peace came over her. She said that her issues cause her to think down on herself alot and she had never experienced a sudden peace and calm before ever! we talked about the gift of the holy ghost and she got super happy! Its incredible when things like that happen and you just think holy cow all of the things we teach are so real and they really help so many people! Suzanne came to church on Sunday and really liked it!! We pushed her Bap date back a few weeks to June 15th so we can help her feel more comfortable with the ward first!! We are super happy for her! 

We taught a woman named Eden in Union on Friday  She has been best friends with a member in the ward there for her whole life. We started out just talking about what missionaries done but eventually she stared asking all kinds of questions!!! Her mom had passed away a few weeks ago so we talked to her about the Plan of Salvation and it was super powerful! She was so excited to read from the Book of Mormon and pray about it! She also came to church on Sunday!!! haha she cried through all of the songs because they were all about Heavenly Fathers love and there was a primary musical number "Families can be together forever" wow!! so perfect for her and she said she felt all warm but with goose bumps!! We are going to invite her to be baptized this week!! 

We had an awesome lesson with Doug. We prayed a ton before and we definitely had some help during the lesson. He has read so much from the Book of Mormon and he is so interested and trying to find out fo himself all of this stuff! his hang up is he doesn't like organized religion because so many terrible thing have been done in the name of religion.. But He's coming along! We were able to go up to his goat herding farm thing and it was so awesome!!! he has a log cabin up there with literally no electricity!! it looks like some thing off little house on the Prairie !! haha we halped him put up a bunch of fence to make a little pasture for his goats. Poor guy get so tired because of his ALS.. but he is seriously the most humble and thankful person in the world. I love that guy so much, He's someone I couldn't picture Heaven without! haha he told us all kinds of stories of his adventures up there just hearing his flock! its really one of the coolest things ever! haha he also has a fire heated hot tub up there and a stream cooled fridge! We are going to go up to his cabin and have a candle lit lesson in the mountains here pretty soon! I still need to get a picture with him!!! 

Doug's cabin

Ok so that about what I have time for.. We had really good lessons with James, and Brian, and Tulley!! Ok real quick Tulley is Anne's grandson who is liveing with her for the summer and he's a super nice guy but just did not want to meet with us.. But we talked to him for awhile last week and he finally started asking questions. We asked if we could come back and have a lesson with him and he accepted!!! so sick! the lesson went really well and he said that he's be baptised as he came to know our message is true!! we gave him a BOM and asked him to start at the beginning! We came back the next day to help Anne prepare for a visitiing teaching lesson and he apologized to us because he had only read 15 pages!!!! holy cow!!! he prayed about it too and he said he felt really good afterward! he has so many awesome questions and he's been takeing notes as he reads!!! so sick!! we have a lesson with him this week and we are so pumped about it! So ya we had a bunch of miracles this week and a ton of answered prayers! I'm actually going to be in Boise for 2 days this week (Thursday & Friday) for this leadership training thing with President Cannon! I'm pretty excited I'll get to spend some more time with him before he goes! soo that will be crazy but the week looks good! I'll be on exchanges those days! 

Hahaha I can't believe its my Birthday already! thats nuts!!!! thanks in advance for all of the Birthday wishes and prayers!! I love you all so much! Holy cow I love being a missionary! its pretty dang awesome!!!! have a great week! try not to cry from missing me to much on the 23rd ;) hahaha jk! I'm doing what I need to on ma B-day! 

Love E macdawesome! Lol or just Aaron!!! Holy cow no more teenage for me!!!!!!!!!!

Goodbyes & Gratitude

Hello My amazing family!!!!!!

Holy good it was to talk to yall's yesterday!! haha I'm feeling really good today actually! Like it was hard for a sec after we hang up but after that I just felt super and was able to focus the rest of the night! Today we are going up to a place in the mountains called Catherine Creek lodge! It sounds like it'll be pretty cool! there are some hikeing trails and stuff we are going to explore so ya! I'll get lots of pictures again!! They have a pipe that brings natural glacier water down from the top of the mountain and we are bringing some empty milk juggs to stock up for the week!  So ya it'll be fun! we also have some good lessons planned for this evening and The Baker city elders came up to hang out with us today so it should be really good! 

Well this week seemed really busy but we had a bunch of extra things we had todo along with our proselyting. We had a Zone Conference on Friday in Caldwell which is pretty much right next to Boise so we had to get up flippin early.. like 430.. but it was definitely worth it!

It was soo good to seem some of my Buddies from Nampa and the MTC and all of that so ya it was cool :) It was President Cannon's last Zone Conference with us so that was kind of sad.. He shared some awesome experiences and I learned ab bunch! Haha he asked each of us to think about what our Mission has meant to us. That was so crazy, You don't really think about all of the experiences or people or just everything that you have learned and how things have changed about you untill you take a step back and look at it as a whole. As I was thinkin back on all the things that I am grateful about my mission hit me like a wall. I kinda teared up with P-Cannon as he told us what his mission has meant to him and I really realized just what its meant to me. That probably one of the reasons I teared up so much yesterday.. lol. I really am so incredibly grateful. I've had the opportunity to be a part of some really amazing things. I'm also glad I have some more time to get work done and have some more experiences on the way!!

Me and Elder Bennet on his last night in the area

Anyways something that was super awesome this week was Brian Davis came to church!!! we have been trying to get him out for awhile! On Wednesday morning while planning for his lesson we had a few things stick out to us that we felt Brian needed to hear! We were teaching the Plan of Salvation and we felt that we really needed to spend some time focusing on Divine potential and individual worth. We read some scriptures with him and talked about it for awhile and he told us at the end that he needed that message really badly..  He said that he had extremely depressed and felt kind of worthless recently and that he had never really though about what he could eventually become! It was a flippin powerful lesson!!

We taught this less active guy Roddy who has a bunch of Word of Wisdom problems about the power of prayer. That was so awesome! he broke down and told us how he's been afraid to prayer because of the mistakes he's made and everything going in his life right now.. We just told him about how much he Is loved by Heavenly Father and he asked him to pray every morning and night. We also invited him to say the the closing prayer as well and we knelt down and had a BOM prayer!!! He also invited us back for family home evening with his fam! We are super excited! He came to church as well!  Soo after talking with yall last night we decided to try some people that are hard to get ahold of during the week.. 

Me and Elder Rogers on his last day in the mission!

We finally talked to the less active guy named Blake! He is living with his Girlfriend who is a Prior investigator that we haven't been able to meet with yet.. We talked to him for a solid 40mins and he said that he was forced into the Church and that he just never gained his own testimony and that he has been to lazy to try and find out for himself if the church is true. We talked about what the gospel means to us and how it could help change his life! The spirit was crazy working on him the whole time! We talked about him and Sabreina(his GF) getting married and what would help breing them closer together. He's going to start comeing to church with her for now on!!! Also we talked about how if he wanted his own testimony and if he Wanted Sabrina to get one as well they needed to Read the B.O.M together and pray together every night. He said he would! We are going to go have a lesson with them on Saturday and text them dureing the week to see how their reading and stuff is going. He know's he's the reason Sabrina hasn't got baptised and so it was so good to just talk to him! I deffinitely was way more bold with him then I am most of the time and the spirit just testified of all the things we were telling him! Hopefully we'll see a wedding here pretty soon and then a Baptisim! I'm so hyped!!

Everyone else is really well :) We have a super busy teaching week planned out so far! Hopefully we'll set Bap dates With Colton and Brian!!! I love being able to do this work yall! when ever I get feeling down or missing home or whatever I focus on all of the crazy awesome thing I get to do and It gets better!!

I love this Gospel! haha its the "Good News!!" I've come to know my Savior so much these past few months!!! I love him! and I love my Heavenly Father for letting me help in this work! Love you all so much!!!!!!!! I'm super excited for the next few weeks to see what going to happen! Keep on sending the prayers my way and send a few down to Hermana Conger In Orlando to!!! :) Love you allll!!!!!!!!!! have a great week!!!!!!!!

Ni Hao mi familia!!!

        Hahaha hey errryone! how in the heck have you all been doing? Thank you dad for keeping me up to date on whats going on! everyone else!!!! whats up guys! I'm still wanting to be apart of stuff! he Mic and manda! email me yo'S! haha and Kera get me your email address to! Hey also I've realized that I need to repent and be better at talkin to my whole family so If you all could send me the Goodmanson's address and Grammy's email address and all that.. Haha I have a little more email time now so I want to make sure I'm using it to stay in touch with everyone!

  Soo anyways my week was crazy! We ended up teaching 27 lessons!!! which is the most I've ever taught in a single week so far! haha It felt nice to be so busy! We went down to Boise on Tuesday and that was awesome!  President Cannon is a super funny and awesome guy and I get super inspired to work like crazy when I get to talk to him! hahah it was funny to see all the Greenis talk like they knew every thing after 3 weeks ;) haha I've never seen that anywhere else before ;) but ya we did allot of training and I got to see some of my city folk mission bud's so  that was fun! Hahaha we had a separate meeting for just trainers where we talked about what our newb's need help with and need to work on and how we can help them and that was good! E Epperson is super critical of himself and struggles with confidence during lesson's so that's what I asked about and I'm really just trying to boost his confidence! That will come with study and experience though so it might be a little..

Anyways we drove like all day and woke up at 4am which was crazy and we ended up getting back at about 6! Just in time to get the work for the night! We had a lot of member support and help in  finding teaching opportunities! We ended up find 2 freakin awesome new Investigators from it! Hhaha one is this German student at EOU who is Mallory's friend. His name is Faulk which is pretty cool!(haha I'm thinking first boy child's name for sure) haha anyways he already has his PHD in Philosophy and is working on his second Doctorate in some type of psychology.. haha so he's like a genius and even in the first lesson with him he has some very deep and intellectual questions! Which is freakin cool! haha I like a challenge and it just force's us to be even more prepared for lessons.

Anyways another cool experience happend with James Thompson(yet another of Mallory's friends(she's freakin a 10x better missionary then I am!!!)) Haha he actually finally came to church yesterday!!! that's was so cool! He really enjoyed it and was very touched that he was allowed to take the sacrament even if he wasn't a member! That was cool! he share a story with us ho w he wasn't allowed to take it at his dad's church and it always made him feel excluded and unworthy.. He said that he felt warm and welcomed at ours though! that was sooooo awesome! he ended up coming to Mallory's New member lesson later that same day and said that he wants to read and take learning more seriously now!!! one of the coolest things about it was how freakin excited Mallory got because of his experience!!! Soo that was cool!

I also finally got to meet with Jon again!!!!!! haha I hadn't heard from that kid in about a month! He's leaving to Byu tomorrow and he's been keeping up on his reading and praying which was good to hear! Also!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He watched gernaral conference and he said that every single talked seemed to be talking about missionary work to him and he prayed after and said that those talks were directed at him telling him that he needed to serve a mission!!!!!!!!! Holy cow I like almost jumped out of my sleep and started crying at the same time lol! He'S going to meet with his Bishop at BYU to discuss the necessary steps and things he needs todo now to prepare but he wants to leave if he can next March at his 1 year mark! soo as soon as he possibly can especially ! He said that he would love to speak Chinese still but he would rather serve in the States!! anyways it'll be sad to seem him go but I got his contact info and I'm just so pumped for him! I knew he was going to do some amazing things! His testimony is already so strong!  

We also had some very good lesson's with less active members and a few of them came to church yesterday! Me and Epperson freaked out when Roddy (this awesome dude from Palou) walked in with his whole family!!! sooo Tight! anyways we were very blessed this week and it felt so good to see the gospel work with a bunch of people! Ok so the hardest moment of the week came on Saturday.. We met with a new member named Zack and he told us that he was done with the church and that he just wanted to cut ties completely... He felt like he was being to pressured to be perfect and since he stopped come to church it has actually been relieving... We tried to help him understand that Christ's gospel isn't designed to burden us its whole purpose is to lift us and take htose burdens away! No matter what though he had made up his mind.. He didn't want us to even text him anymore. Hahah but!! after a little persuasion I did get him to agree to let me come say goodbye to him when I leave the area.

We talked to some people in the YSA branch and they are going to just keep being his friend and reaching out to him. It sucks but it was a huge reality check for me on how important it is to help people more  fully develop their testimonies before things like Baptism. He's a good kid though! He'll come back around! We definitely haven't given up on him!!!! haha so We get to taste the sour and the sweet on a mission and I'm so glad that since Heavenly Father loves us most of the time we are overloaded with the sweet! Suzanne's doing really well! Doug is doing really well! Ruby is doing awesome preparing for her Baptism!  I can see a few more in this area coming up to!

 Thats about it for the week! I can't complain at all! I'm love"n it! We only have 2 weeks left in this transfer!!! thats insane  ahah this week was literally a blur lol! Anyways! Hey is there anything that yall want to hear about that I'm not covering in my emails?? I try to get you's guy's the highlights and share some strories but If you have some questions let me know!! Soo Yup!

Thank you as always for the Love and support! it really does mean the world to me! I know that this is the work of God! That is absolutely for sure! It wouldn't help and touch so many different people in so many different ways if it wasn't divinely inspired! I love it! I love my Savior and I love my Heavenly father! Keep on being awesome! I love you a so much! HAHA HEY! I'm going to talk to yalls in less then a month! SCHWEET!!! haha

<3's via E Aaron aka Elda Fliptastic!

After the storm & new member temple trip

Hey family Macfarlane! how are yall?? 

I'm glad you guys were safe from the storm. I was prayin pretty hard for all yall! haha I got a bunch of pity from members who forgot which state I'm from but remembered it was the east coast so yeah.. I think I was asked like 5 times if my house was destroyed. Thankfully not the case! 

Sooo it was a pretty up and down week. On Tuesday we took my little old German investigator Anna through the Temple! on the way out she said it felt like a warm blanket and the reverence inside made her feel like she was really in Gods house. After she asked us questions and we talked about Jesus Christ and we were able to bear a short testimony with her and hear her testimony of the savior and yeah... what an amazing experience. I also had an interview with President Cannon and he told me to prepare myself for more work and responsibility... I don't know what that means but I'm not sure I like it haha.

We found a few investigators this week and that is always cool! I hope I get to see these people progress! Probably my favorite experience of the week happened on Thursday. We were riding around and attempting to contact some people that we've talked to on the side of the road and in their yards and stuff, anyways there is the one woman named Sarah who we talked to awhile back and wasn't to interested so we decided to give her one more shot. We started talking to her on her door step and we are just laughing and talking about her week and suddenly she just starts crying and tells us about some of the major trials she's facing right now. She needed someone to talk to and it felt good to be able to help her by just listening, anyways afterward we taught her a little bit about the plan of salvation and how it can bring greater meaning in or lives. We just told her about how the gospel has helped us and let her know that it could bring her comfort as well. We left a plan of salvation pamphlet and left. Its cool to be able to see someone light up from the message we share. We are going to visit her this week and hopefully she's feeling better and will be prepared to accept the gospel. 

That was the highlights rest of the week was sorta the same ole haha. We got to play football today which was awesome! Hope yall are doing well and stay healthy! 

Love you all!! Kera holy happy late birthday!!!!! I meant to send a letter but i forgot. ugh glad you all got to spend that together! 

Love Elder Macfarlane!