November 16th E-mail

Well hello there fam! Well dad i hope you have had your fix for eye surgeries for a while.. that would be nice! I wish there was something i could do for ya.. I will continue praying for ya! So mom i guess you just felt a little left out with dad having all these surgeries that you decided to go get stuff done to your back eh? Its like trying to keep up with the Jones' in our family now isn't it... :D Its a good thing I'm not home or else i would have to think up something to mess up real bad so that i could have the worst problems in the house.. you know how competitive i can get :D lol no but i really am praying for both of you! no more old people symptoms until your at least 50... ok?! oh and by the way mom i am fine from the car accident.. i promise. but yes it really is a miracle! pretty crazy pictures huh? So how has the weather been in Utah? we got some snow here.. and boy i tell you what this place is so beautiful! I absolutely love it! Like even at the library where i am at right now out the window is just woods.. its awesome! and there is deer all over the place.. I haven't seen any elk but the deer are everywhere.. We see them everyday. In fact the other night we were driving and one of them hit the side of our car! it was just like what happened to me when i was in Shelly's little red car down by snow college! but no worries i think the deer lived... :D So this week we went and raked leaves for our ward mission leader at his house.. well he lives up at deer lake and he owns this resort up there and it is just absolutely beautiful! I couldn't believe it. He has all the docks too that go out into the lake and i wanted to go fish off them so bad! lol.. but we had to rake leaves otherwise he probably would have let me.. He is like 80 years old and he is the nicest guy in the world! But it was pretty fun. maybe when the lake freezes over he will let us go ice fishing off of his dock.. that would be perfect. Plus they have lots of cool fish in the lake he said.. So this week overall was pretty good. It feels as if we have a lot of work that is just kinda sitting on the fence and so we have been trying our best to shake the fence and just hoping and praying that they will fall on the right side :D But we will see what happens. The Bassett family is still doing pretty good. They didn't make it to church this week. And Bruce (the dad) well he is a history guy and he just loves history but because of that he went on google and typed in "Joseph Smith" and "Brigham Young" and so on and so forth and just read everything that he could find.... so he is a little upset because of it.. But the cool thing is that it makes no difference whatsoever what happened in the lives of those men regarding the restoration of the gospel when it comes to knowing whether or not Christ's church is back on the earth.. Satan just tries to make it about the prophets or (the men) when really it is about our savior Jesus Christ and what he has done for us right here right now! along with what he did for us 2000 years ago.. but that is the comforting part.. and we kind of explained that to him.. but we will see.. so please remember the Bassett Family (Bruce, Laura, Nick, and Elizabeth) in your prayers if you will! They are such a wonderful family and they know darn near everyone in the ward and didn't even know that they went to the church.. So that is a good thing so we are just going to try to get the ward more involved with them and see if we can help them progress in gaining testimonies! But we are excited for what work the Lord has given us right now! In the district we had 2 baptisms this week.. and so that is cool.. We are just plugging along.. Oh and mom about boots we are going to try to make it down to Spokane sometime soon and see what we can do about buying some boots.. so i will let you know about that.. But if you find some polishable WARM black boots just send the pic or link to me and i will check them out and tell you what i think.. :D I know we kind of did that last year but then i didn't really need them so now that i need them well i will put a little more into it :D Well interviews are tomorrow... and so I am looking forward to that! I love President Palmer! He is a wonderful man! Such a spiritual leader... its awesome! But I'm looking forward to hopefully getting a heads up about what is going to happen this transfer even though we still have 2 weeks to go.. But my guess is for me that i will be here the rest of my mission... But we will see what happens.. I cannot believe that Saturday was my 18 month mark.. WOW! that went by fast.. But anyways I love you guys so much! Thanks for all that you do for me! Get better both of you! Take care of yourselves!

Elder Penman

The First Snow and Car Wreck!

November 9, 2009 E-mail

Whats happenin?!?!?! So highland got stomped eh? that's no good. Oh well there is always next year... At least you made it to the playoffs.. So dad what is the deal with your eye? this is absolutely crazy! Let me know how it goes! You will definitely be in my prayers and thoughts! Which eye even is it? hopefully its not your shooting eye... cause we are going killing, not hunting, killing when i get home :D It just pure torture to serve in an area where everyone goes hunting and has a love for hunting and yet i cant go.. lol. but its ok. there will be plenty of elk slaughtering for me to do when i get home! Well we had an awesome week this week. I went on an exchange to Mead. And i was with Elder Johnson and his comp came up here to be with Elder Tueller for the day.. I go on about 1 exchange a week usually. But anyways i was on exchanges and a year ago when i was in River Ridge the Mead elders were in our district and so i had gone on exchanges there plenty of times before. Well we went and talked to this native American lady named penny and turns out i had taught her a year ago when i was a greenie. And here we are teaching her again and so she shows us a picture of her husbands side of the family (her husband is white) and there is a family that is in my ward right now here in Clayton.. so i was like oh hey i know them! and anyways it was pretty fun cause we taught her about how the BoM is her history and i committed her to find out where she came from.. like where Indians came from.. and so we will see what happens.. but she was telling us how her tribe doesn't have like written records of anything.. all their history gets passed down from their elders. and i was like well your history is written down right here.. and held up the BoM. lol... so i was just trying to get her out of the grove from learning about religion and about what other people believe to actually taking a personal liking to the BoM. but its just interesting how the Lord works ya know? Everything definitely happens for a reason. Elder Johnson's companion Elder Stewart is seriously just like Hammy the Squirrel off of the movie Over the Hedge.. seriously its like he is on speed all the time! he definitely wants to work hard and that's a good thing.. he is just a super spaz. Like Elder Tueller told me that they were tracting and Elder Stewart walked up to this lady and said hey how are ya? and the lady said good and he said have to ever heard of the golden plates? and she goes ya i have... does the church still have those? and he said Nope we don't know what happened to them! LOL! so he just gets so excited that he says really stupid things.. but oh well. He has only been out 2 months.. what do ya expect. At least he is talking to people.. So we had a really good turnout at church this week. A family of 4 came! Bruce and Laura and her kids Nick and Elizabeth and they are 12 and 10 years old. And the kids had friends at church that they didn't know went there and this is the parents second week in a row coming to church! I think that they are really liking it! I am hoping so anyways! But its funny cause their first to looks at the Mormon church are testimony meeting and then this week they had the primary program! so i was like hrrrrrp! I told them 3rd time would be a charm for them.. lol! But i got to teach the gospel principles class this week and it was on the Atonement! man i love teaching that class! I hope that's the calling they give me when i come home! Its a fun one to teach! Plus i wouldn't go crazy and teach a bunch of deep doctrine to peoples investigators.. anyways.. It was just fun. So i bought me another 4GB SD card for my camera this morning and so i will probably send my other one home soon.. Which will be cool cause there are a lot of videos on there that you could see. :D especially of my throwing down! woot! dunks like mad! :D Well i hope everything goes well with you guys! Take care of yourselves! I love you guys so much! Its almost thanksgiving can you believe it?!?! crazy! time is flying! but i love ya and i look forward to hearing back from ya! take care!

Elder Penman

November 2nd E-mail

Whats going on?!! things are absolutely crazy here! I wasn't going to but i will go ahead and tell you. lol. So this week was an absolute miracle I was on exchanges with the Deerpark missionaries... I was with Elder Holtom who is a great missionary. We were in his area and he was driving. We were headed to a members home to tell them some good news about a place that we found for this family they knew to live in and their driveway (along with everyone else's driveway in deerpark and the surrounding areas) was like a mile long. It was a dirt road so we were driving at a pretty fast speed.. (way too fast) and we took a few corners...well we had one corner that turned to the right and not only that but it was a blind corner. It was wet and there were leaves everywhere... well we took the corner and our back tires slid and when the back left tire slid over the bank the car bottomed out and FLIPPED! Next thing i know we are hanging upside down in our seat belts! I know for a fact that we are and were watched over! We are both fine now! That car is totalled but we literally walked away. Elder Holtom had some scratches on his wrist from crawling out of the car with all the broken glass everywhere and i had a bump on my head from where the roof caved in and drilled me :D but that is it! Our backs were both a little stiff the next 2 days but seriously we are fine... its a miracle! We are seriously so thankful to be alive right now. But trust me when i say we are ok.. mom don't freak out and call the mission pres... and don't worry... :D But talk about crazy! I will send some pics... so you will see what happened but it was absolutely nuts! We are so grateful! So lesson learned! Don't drive fast on dirt roads and definitely don't take the corners! Other good news is that we had 3 investigators at church! Two of them are a new couple and it was their first time at church! and it was perfect because the wife (their names are Bruce and Laura) and Laura had her dad pass away and she didn't deal with it too well.. well one of the guys at church who just lost his wife this week got up and bore his testimony about eternal families and he was smiling and he did a very good job it was amazing! as Bro. Barns was bearing his testimony the spirit was so strong! I couldn't believe it! How could a man get up the week of his wife's death that he had been married to for 56 years and be so at ease? That is the peace that only the gospel can bring into a persons life! That is a true testimony of this gospel! Well I am running out of time! i got 1 minute left! So i will just say that i love you guys so much! I am fine! Please don't worry about me! But that was a pretty darn cool story! I will forever be known as part of the coolest car crash in the mission! woot! lol! I love you guys! take care!

Elder Penman

October 26th E-mail

Whats happening?!?! So dad i guess after all these years planned surgery just gets boring? so you have decided to spice things up and just go in for unexpected surgery every now and then? geez. You gotta take it easy on yourself! But i am glad to hear that you are ok though. I will be praying for ya! So i am way excited for this area! We actually live in Deer Park but we just cover the Clayton ward. Clayton is a town just north of Deer Park. We also go up to like Loon lake and Deer Lake if you want to look it up on a map or something. Its pretty dang cool though to be out in the sticks! I would say there are more dirt roads than asphalt in our area and for sure in the neighboring Deer park area.. Its way fun. There isn't even a stop light in Deer Park. I guess they tried to put one in a few years back but everyone just kept running it so they took it out and put stop signs back in :D People are way cool up here though. Everyone loves to hunt and they are just some down to earth red necks.. I love it! So the craziest thing yesterday. Church was cancelled due to no power at the building.. I guess its something underground and they are going to have to tear up some of the parking lot to fix it.. and we were supposed to have Zone Conference there on Wednesday but i guess not... But since church was cancelled we went to the baptist church that is across the street from our house :D By the way we have a very sweet apartment! We dont live with members.. Members own our apartment and its underneath their house but its a separate apartment still.. But its nice to have our own washer and dryer and dishwasher.. Ya we are spoiled! woot! and a car! full time! lol! what a great place to die! oh but ya the baptist church was pretty dang funny! Somehow his sermon took a turn and out of no where some of the things were directed at us... lol! like for instance right before they did the sacrament He prefaced it with "If you are here and you believe the way that we do in the fact that we believe that Jesus is God and part of the Tri-une God and that His word is the bible which is the ONLY word of God and so on and so forth for like 10 minutes and then he said if you believe this then we invite you to partake of this bread and wine with us.. LOL! tell me what pastor would begin the sacrament on a regular basis like that? NOPE! it was just funny.. but we just smiled and didn't take the sacrament... oh and right before he said we do invite all to stay but if any would like to leave they may.. LOL! his sermon was on the requirements of a deacon because they were going to appoint some deacons or something but somehow took a twist to the requirements of an Elder.. and he even said we have 4 elders here from another church and in fact today we are going to take about the requirements of an Elder.. which was pointless because they don't even have elders in their church.... lol.. so it was just funny the way he directed some things towards us... but we enjoyed it.. The people were really nice and old.. there were 4 kids there.. the rest were old.. and some guy came up to us and said are you guys looking for a church body or are you just visiting? I wanted to tell him you know we were just visiting but today has helped me realize that my year and a half ministry for the LDS church has been bogus and i want to be a pastor for your church! lol.. maybe its just me but i think i could make a really good baptist preacher! like southern baptist preacher! AMEN! lol! but no it was pretty good. We are teaching a family of 4 named the Basset family. and they are awesome! We are looking forward to working with them. We have a bunch of people we are working with but i haven't had a chance to meet them all yet. My comps name is Elder Tueller. He is pretty dang cool! He is 21 like me. he has only been out a few months.. this is his 3rd transfer. But his trainer was a lazy piece of crap and yet he never slept in or anything.. even though his trainer was a horrible example he hung in there and tried to do his best.. But he told me when i got here that he wanted to learn how to plan and be effective because his TRAINER never taught him! How lame is that.. that pisses me off! as a trainer myself i think it is lame that other trainers don't try to give these missionaries the best start that they can.. but what do ya do.. But elder tueller is from San Diego Cali! but don't worry he isn't a liberal. he broke his neck in a mountain biking accident a while ago and he is lucky to be in the position he is in right now.. but he cant ride a bike anymore so we drive everywhere or walk! ITS SWEET! its the way to go I'm telling ya! :D but i am very impressed with how good of a missionary he is with the trainer that he had.. Well i love you guys! Thanks for everything that you do! Thanks for your prayers! take care of yourself!

Elder Penman

Oh and a shout out to Bro. & Sis. Erickson if they are blogging me! keep it pimpin in post falls! :D

October 19th E-mail

Whats going on?!?! Arent the Frantz' just great?! I love em. So im sure she told you about the baptism but it went fantastic! Infact Brian's mom and dad (arent members) were there and also his grandmother and grandfather (arent members either) were there as well.. When his parents first got there he goes oh and mom and dad this is the missionaries.. Introduced us and then he goes oh and by the way they are great elders and so if you want to take discussions from them well these would be the ones to do it with cause they are the best! LOL! His parents just kind of smiled and let it roll off..(I dont blame them it was funny so i was kinda laughing..) And so for halftime (while they are getting dressed after the baptism) We taught the restoration.. And they loved it! We had his parents full attention as we shared that. So hopefully we planted a seed that can continue to be nourished.. So then on Saturday we got together with the whole mission in Spokane! To meet with Elder Bednar! We took a mission picture with him aswell! it was fun! I got a posterity picture with all my boys! :D Elder Bednar was great! He didnt prepare a talk or anything he came and told us that tonight might be a little different than you expected. Elder Rasband (Presidency of the seventy) and I havent prepared some long talks for you or anything but tonight will be a revelatory experience. An opportunity for you to recieve revelation and be taught by the Holy Ghost. And i must tell you that it was! It was so awesome! He is such a wonderful man! That meeting was not about him at all! He was so HUMBLE! I could not believe it! I was absolutely floored! I learned so much! I dont have time to write everything down that he said. But one thing that stuck out to me was that he said "the purpose of the gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" It is so true. He said some on you will be taught by the Holy Ghost on things for the people you are working with and so on. but he said that some of you are going to be shown a few things that you could improve on which is part of the Holy Ghosts job. To let us know what we are doing wrong so that we can change it. Hence afflicting the comfortable :D But it was awesome! Another part the stuck out to me is when he talked about obedience. He said that we not only have to learn how to do the things the Lord has asked us to do (which is just what most people think about even myself) But he said that we must learn to love to do the thing that the Lord asks us to do! He said then we will be with people that love to obey as well. But if we hate to obey then we will be with people that hate to obey... (that's the shortened version anyways..) But it made me do a lot of reflecting! And I absolutely love Elder Bednar! :D And then to top the meeting off our ward mission leader Bro Robison came with us to that meeting and from that meeting we went directly to a teaching appointment where we were teaching Debbie Haynes the Jehovah Witness. I wont tell you everything that happened during the lesson due to time but during the lesson she broke down in tears and with a smile on her face lifted her head and said "does anyone else feel that?" as she was holding her chest. And we said yes and she said "I studied with the witnesses for YEARS and never have i felt anything like that!" The spirit pretty much took her breath away! IT was one of the neatest lessons that i have been in! We are teaching her again tonight! and she is awesome! So what a way to top off that spiritual meeting! I LOVE THE LORD! I absolutely love Him! He guides everything we do! And I love it! So now for the moment that you have all been waiting for.... I'M GETTING TRANSFERRED!!! I will be serving in Clayton. It is just outside of Deerpark in Washington. And its in the same Zone that i was in as a greenie! I am going to "mom" someone.. An Elder that came out with Elder Allred and his name is Elder Tueller. Elder Tueller's trainer who came out with me, Elder Yancey, Is coming to "mom" Elder Allred so we are doing a swap :D So that will be pretty dang fun! I have a car full time! So i can put on some weight during the winter! LOL! But i am excited! This could possibly be my last area!!! crazy huh! weird but here is the mailing address: # 10-A N. Reiper St. Deerpark WA 99006 so please give that to Shannon :D and tell her to send me a tape and some pictures! :D she is worried that she cant fill up a whole tape so tell her that you guys will blab on it for a while.. :D lol! but anyways i am excited! Clayton sounds like a killer place! its definitely boonies though! I'm going from having 800 miles a month here to having 1250 miles a month there.. so that lets ya know kinda what it will be like :D But hey i love you guys very much! I'm glad the surgery went well on dads eye.. i figured something would be getting loose in there with how many times i beat him up.... :D i am glad everything is ok now! lol mom i tell all my companions that i go to stake conference with that its supposed to be our day off! lol! But isn't stake conference so good?!?! I love it! Thanks for all you do! I love you guys! It gets super cold in Clayton so I might try to push it through the winter without boots but i might need some... so there is an idea for Christmas.. But we will kinda play it by ear.. I love you guys! Thanks for everything you do! Take care of yourselves!

Elder Penman

October 12th E-mail

Whats happening?!?! Well Wednesday night is the night! Brian Abbott is getting dunked! woot! I am so excited! Oh and by the way transfers are coming up next week so i will find out Saturday where,if anywhere, i am going. So i am just glad that no matter what happens I was able to get a baptism with my greenie! Which is always nice to start off with a baptism with your trainer! But Brian is solid. He is a way cool guy. And he is going to teach me how to wake board after the mish... We also started teaching the lady, Debbie Haynes, who is a less-active Jehovah Witness. And she is really searching for something! We had a very powerful lesson with her as we were able to answer a lot of her questions by reading from different passages out of the BoM. There spirit was so strong! The way we found her was through her son who joined the church about 2 and a half years ago. But she told us at the end of the lesson that she was going to cancel on us today but that she decided to go ahead and meet with us. Then she said that she is not only glad that she didn't cancel but that she is way excited to meet with us again! So that was pretty comforting! A few interesting beliefs that they have though. They believe that Jehovah is God the Father. Hence their name.. and so that has led to some very interesting studies for me! And i have found many scriptures that link the old testament(Jehovah) with the new testament(Jesus Christ) like Isaiah 43: 3,11 and Luke 2:11, Deuteronomy 32: 2-4 and 1 Corinthians 10: 1-4, Exodus 3:14 and John 8:54-58, and even John 5:22 and (BoM)Moroni 10:34. (by the way that was all off the top of my head so if they are a little off just run with it :D) (although i think those are right) but something that is my favorite is that in John 8:58 when he references "I Am" it could still be up in there air about well how do you know that he was referring to the same thing as in exodus. Well the way we know that he used the name of Jehovah by saying what is in our English versions as "I Am" is that in verse 59 of John 8 we read that they were going to stone him after he said that well the reason that they were going to stone him is found in Leviticus 24:26 where it is given in Jewish law never to utter the name of the Lord for it is deemed Blasphemies and if one is caught doing so he should be stoned to death. So therefore we know that the reference in verse 58 is refering to Jehovah otherwise they wouldn't have tried to stone him to death! In fact the Name of the Lord was only uttered once a year by the high priest as he entered into the holy of holies! Pretty dang cool eh? yep believe it or not i am learning something :D In fact i have had some absolutely amazing studies this week! Its just been awesome! I love the scriptures! They definitely are the words of God! There is so much for us to learn in there! So in a very manly sense we all just got done doing some YOGA! before we came to email! LOL! there is a lady in the ward who is a yoga instructor and well she offered us some free lessons! and we took her up on it and its freaking awesome! oh and by the way i got some videos of me doing some way sweet dunks! So I will have to put the on a C.D. and send em home for proof! lol :D ! Oh and by the way I ate a Habenero last night! woot! Those babies are pretty warm! lol! But everything is going pretty well! So i love you guys! Thanks for everything! Take care! Love ya!

Elder Penman