Week 53: There is so much for us to learn!

Well hello there family,

 

Scripture of the week: Helaman 3;14-15, there is so much more for us to learn

well heck lets not beat around the bush, lets talk about some baptism news. Its really impossible to do the baptism justice via email so lucky for you we get to talk in two days and i will give you all of the details on it then. Just know that it went awesome and was so amazing!

Everyone at the baptism! All those in White went in the water to assist!

This week was just very wonderful as a whole. on wednesday we had interviews that i talked about last week. Our training part was magnificent! we have gotten a lot of wonderful feedback, and president is talking about taking what we used for our training and using it mission wide, that would be so exciting. So yup i did get to have an interview with president. Zone leaders get longer ones so we can talk about everyone in the zone so instead of the normal 15 minutes i got a whole 30 with the man all by myself it was pretty wonderful. We talked alot about me being in vermont so long, and i told him i never want to leave here cause its home now. His response to that was " oh dont get to comfortable" so i dont know what he has up his sleeve, but i guess we will just have to find out when it happens. I found out why i love it here in the green mountain state so much. This is the place where i have felt the closest to my savior so therefore i dont want to leave. Vermont is where elder zilles has truly been converted to the gospel of jesus christ. dang i love this gospel.

 

Sorry i didnt ever get christmas cards made, heck i havent even mailed your present yet, poop maybe ill just bring it home with me in a year and it can be for that christmas. we will have to see what happens.

 We had the biggest ice storm that has hit vermont in 20 years. Yesterday there was no joke an inch of ice covering everything. So church was cancelled stake wide. I was bummed because first that means brian has to wait a full week to get confirmed and also no christmas program.

Elder Z and the "Liahona" at the Mission home

 

 

I really dont have too much to talk about in the email, cause i gotta save stuff for the skype time.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas eve love you guys!

Hold to the rod
Elder Zilles

 

Week 52: The BEST WEEK (is yet to come)

Hello fam,

Scripture of the week: Alma 52:20-21

wow is it really monday already?? Sometimes i just dont know where the time goes. Especially on weeks we have meetings. 

So the meeting this week was really really really long. This one was different than most of them, we had all of the district leaders come to it, and usually its only us zone leaders and the sister training leaders.

Once we got home from manchester we have been spending most of our time preparing for interviews with president stoker this week. The way interviews work is while president interviews one person at a time we zone leaders do a big training with the whole zone. So i have been pretty stressed out of my mind with getting that all planned, but we finally got that all finalized last night so now i can breathe again. Our whole training is on obedience, so wish us luck a few missionaries in the zone will most likely hate us by the time its over, but i guess that is what they get for being disobedient missionaries. 

So yes i got my other package this week, and i love the whole thing, my cd is wonderful and i love the stocking from nacho, cant wait to open it on christmas. The nativity from the family has already come in handy. The day it came in the mail we had a lesson with an investigator and we realized she had never even heard the whole christmas story so we taught her the story of christmas with my nativity set. it was so cool to get that in the mail after all those years writing on it it was so neat to be on the other end of things, this is such a special time of year. 

Well this week it dropped below zero so i am no longer enjoying warmer weather. Yesterday we got a foot of snow so it looks like its here to stay.

It sounds like everything else on the home front is going well. 

This week is going to be one of the best weeks of my life. i get emotional just typing about it... But my good friend  has asked me to baptize him on saturday. as you know it will be my first time EVER in the water. I cant even express in words how much of an honor it is to get to baptize him! it will be so amazing cant wait to give you all of hte details on it next week. 

Holy poop hump day is on thursday.. No tell the time to slow down, its going way to fast i have so much to get done and so little time. Anyone who ever said two years is a long time is crazy, it is the shortest amount of time ever. SLOW DOWN!

Glad to hear grandpa is doing well, give them my love. 

Welp i think thats all ive got for yall this week sure do love ya

Hold to the rod

Tonernation

WEEK 51!!!

Hey My dear family,

I must apologize i dont have a scripture of the week this week. i think its the first week ive missed since ive been out! Well i am sure you noticed this, but it is week 51. that means there must be something super fantastic that is going to happen this week, guess we will have to wait and see. 

Elder Zilles and his Christmas tree from home:) He says "Yes, the organized desk is mine"

Well mom i do enjoy dads funky greetings, but i am totally good with you two weeks in a row. 

So yes we did get to watch the Christmas Devotional. No one showed up here at the church so it was just the two of us chilling in the high council room watching it on the big screen. They were all such great talks. It was different to just get a greeting talk from president monson, i have a feeling he wasnt feeling to well. I dont know if you noticed, but he now needs help to get up out of his chair, it was heart breaking to see that. 

 Its 23 today and thats the coldest its been in about a week or so.

We had an awesome lesson with one of our investigators  at her home. She is 13 and prayed for the first time in her life yesterday. we sat on our knees for no joke 20 minutes just letting the spirit work with her. It goes in the top 5 events of my mission for sure. 

Well you are probably wondering who the new companion is... His name is Elder Davis he is from Layton. 

The festival of choirs went really well on saturday, we had a  family surprised us and show up so that was really really neat. 

Thank you so much for my count down package and the awesome tree, ill attach some pictures. 

I got a package from a grandma in my last area this week as well, she hand knitted me some socks they are so comfortable. I probably miss her just about as much as i miss you guys.

Headed down to manchester this afternoon for leadership meeting so gonna be another wild crazy week. Thats ok though i can sleep when im dead. 

Tell ya what though i sure do miss my cows, however i DO NOT miss dealing with that dang water trough in the frigid cold weather. 

sure do love y'all,  talk soon

Hold to the Rod

Elder Zilles

Week 50: Comfort my Soul in Christ

Hello my Family,

Scripture of the week: Alma 31:31

This is a scripture I found this week while studying, and it really hit me hard how all the real lasting

comfort that we need and can obtain in this life come through our brother and savior Jesus Christ.

Well what a crazy wild week.

First things first, to get yall straightened out! Elder Simkins is going home TOMORROW! Yup the past

six weeks have totally just blown right on by. As Zone Leaders there is ZL1 and ZL2, well I had every

intention of staying as ZL2, but I guess the lord had something else in mind for me, I of course am staying

in Essex, but am going to be ZL1, also my new comp will be a first time zone leader, so after just 6 weeks

of this I have to train a new one how to do all of this ZL goodness. It will be great though. So tomorrow

we are headed to transfer meeting in Manchester. I am pretty stoked, it’s the first time I’ve gotten to go to

a transfer meeting since March when I picked elder Guinn up, pretty good streak if ya ask me. Crazy to

think that in a year I will be in elder Simkins shoes and will be heading home! The time sure flies just gotta

live it up while I got it.

Well thanksgiving was great! We had a wonderful time at the bishops, good food, but I’m sure it could not

compare with food at the Barringer family get together. Yup you guessed it the thing I missed the most

was the pomegranate salad. Well as you know we could not play in a turkey bowl, so being me I decided

we needed to come up with a way for our zone to have a bit of a competition. So we decided we would

have a turkey eat off. We had everyone in the zone weigh themselves t giving morning and then at the

end of the day to see how much we had all gained. It was a good time. The crazy thing was I weighed in

the exact same morning and night, it was pretty crazy. But oh well.

So I realized today that since I got to Essex I have been terrible at updating you on the people we are

teaching, so I am going to try to start doing better with that. Friday night we got the privilege to go down to

the JSM for the lighting of the memorial. We were able to take one of our investigators. We will be setting

a baptism date next time we meet with one of our other families! Speaking of bap dates, we set one last

night with an amazing friend. We are tag teaching him with the Polls and he is literally the coolest person

ever. He is in his 40s and in a wheelchair, he is so amazing. He is scheduled to be baptized December

21st so excited.

Last night we spent some time with the polls, we decorated their little Christmas tree, so that was pretty

great. I won’t be home for Christmas but I will be in the next best place. Sister poll wants me to bring my

Christmas packages over and put them under the tree and open them over there on Christmas morning.

There is a member of the ward that looks scary like grandpa don. His name is brother Seay, but I told him

he looks like grandpa so now I call him grandpa Seay. He is so funny.

It sounds like t-give day was a good time as usual. Also glad the tree hunt was good.

This week would normally be training week in Manchester, but with transfers they moved it to next week,

so yup it’ll just be another super busy week. But don’t get me wrong I absolutely love my calling.

We have our ward party on the 14th. This Saturday we have what they call the "festival of choirs" choirs

from 7 different denominations come to the chapel and we put on a huge concert. We are ushering for

that, so it should be a great opportunity to get to meet some awesome new people.

I actually found a few second to write some letters this morning while elder simkins took his LAST ever

reports from the zone. So those will be on the way sometime this week. Also I got my awesome package.

I have worn my shirt to write in my journal each night this week. Cookies were great as well. I can’t think

of much else I need to tell you at the moment, but I am sure there will be more that I think of later.

Sure love you

Hold to the rod

Elder Zilles

Week 49: Teaching the gospel, parenting, and missionary work

Wello, (went to type well hello and that’s what my fingers typed instead so that’s what you get)

Scripture of the week: Alma 26:35-37

I must admit.... we were talking with the Polls last night and I could not take the suspense anymore, so I made them look up the outcome of the state game for me. Kind of a bummer that they weren’t able to pull it off, but it sounds like it was really a hard fought battle.

It’s officially cold here in Vermont. We got our first snow that actually stuck and today its 16 degrees out. I’m working really hard at being positive about how I feel about cold weather, but you all know how much I just hate it, so it’s a battle trying to be positive about it.

Twas a fantastic week though. I had the privilege of being here in Essex on exchange with elder jessee, you met his parents at the wilkeys homecoming. It’s kind of interesting, he and I have never served close to each other and we weren’t even in the same district in the MTC but he is probably one of my best friends in the mission, we pretty much just had a party the whole time we were on exchange. While we were together we hit our 11 month mark so it just gave us even more of a reason the celebrate. It was really nice being on an exchange that I could just kind of relax. Most the time on exchanges I am spending the whole time correcting elders and doing training, so this was a really nice break.

Hmmm what else happened this week?.... well it is officially really really cold here in Vermont. It’s pretty bad, the whole mission has caught on to the elder zilles being stuck in Vermont jokes. Every time I call president or the assistants they have to make some crack about me being stuck here for life. I’ve decided I’m good with it though. I will for sure be here for my first year. Found out this week that I could totally apply for in state tuition and stuff for the state of Vermont cause I haven’t left the state in a year.

I spoke in sacrament yesterday. It was just me and the high councilor so I had to take half the time. It went really well though. My topic was "teaching the gospel" At first I thought I would totally just teach about missionary work, but as I was preparing my talk I got the feeling I needed to direct my talk to parenting. So I titled it "teaching the gospel, parenting and missionary work". I will send my notes to you and you can check them out. Sounds like nacho did a great job speaking as well. GO LOU! I based most of my talk off of the story of the stripling warriors!

So for thanksgiving we are eating with our bishop and his family. Up till late this week we didn’t have an appointment, cause most people are going out of town, so we had decided that we were just going to take ourselves to the Chinese buffet. But we lucked out and don’t have to do it. The ward is having a turkey bowl but unless something changes we won’t be playing in it cause president stoker doesn’t want anyone getting hurt, kind of a bummer but important to be obedient.

I hope dad’s surgery goes well this week. Always scary to know that kind of stuff is going on when I’m not around, but all will be well. I won’t have any time to hand written any letters today. We are going bowling with our district, and then we are going on a tour of the Ben and Jerries Ice cream factory, then I am going on exchange to Montpelier, so it’s a pretty crazy day and a start to a really wild crazy week. Gotta love it though.

 Hopefully I covered everything, sure love you guys.

Love ya

Elder Zilles

Week 48: "Let your shoes tell you the story of your mission"

Hello my dear family,

Scripture of the week: Ether 12:18

 

 I forgot my zone conference notes at the apartment so I don’t have anything to give you insights from it. Sorry I guess we will just have to go off of my memory, which can be scary at times. But anyways zone conference was incredible. The spirit was just absolutely amazing the whole time. The day started off with my interview with Giff Neilson. He is an incredible man. He had so many great stories to tell. He came in to interview me and was like "so why are we meeting today" I said "I don’t know you tell me" he had no idea either, so we just talked about the gospel and gospel leadership the whole time it was a really special treat. The whole conference was just so wonderful. I really wish i had my notes with me though. You know how I like quotes. There were so many good ones from this conference. Elder Neilson talked a lot about the atonement and the infinite power that it has in our lives. It was very neat. some of my favorite quotes from him were "You were not sent here to be AVERAGE" "Let your shoes tell the story of your mission" "let the savior be the editor of your life story" and there were so many other amazing ones that my bad memory can’t think of right now.

 

Elder Quinton Joseph, conversing with the Prophet Joseph

 

The more time I get to spend with president stoker the more I grow to love him. I loved president wilkey, but president stoker is definitely supposed to be in this mission at this time. He is a wonderful ,wonderful man.

 

we got the privilege of taking an investigator  on a tour to the JSM on Saturday, that was a very neat experience. The spirit is always so strong at that sacred place i hope you get to see it someday. We are teaching another family tonight so details about that will have to follow next week. But we did however find another awesome family, they referred themselves to us when they were in Hawaii a few weeks ago. They are the only non members in their family. We had dinner with them last night, and out of nowhere they asked “do you give blessings to non members?' We of course said yes. So it was a really neat experience.

 

Each Monday morning we have to do zone reports. And every other week we report to president. This week was president. At the end president was like "wow your zone has a lot of issues right now, I now see why you two were assigned to that zone". It’s pretty cool to have him say stuff like that but at the same time it’s no fun to have to do all of the dirty work in the zone. But somebody has got to do it and I’m not going to complain because this is where the lord has called me to serve at this time.

 

Good luck this week Pirates. I’ll have to make sure I wear my west side football shirt to do service on Saturday. Hope they all know they have people cheering for them all over the world. So cool. I hope they win this one for coach Eb.

 

 

Sure love you guys have a wonderful week

Hold to the rod

Elder Zilles

 

Week 47: Birthday Goodness

Hello Family,

Scripture of the week:

Acts 27:23

What a week! where did the time go? weeks go really fast when you spend all of your time either in a car or in meetings or on the phone correcting disobedient missionaries. The good news is we have a full pday today so i have more time to email and i hope to even get some hand written letters replied to. First off thank you so much for all the birthday goodness. It was a great day. Sister Poll made me dinner that night and we played cards with them as well, it was just wonderful, i missed you guys but we will reunite in no time. sister poll made me chicken enchilades and then asked what my favorite desert was... i couldnt decide if i wanted cheese cake or pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. So sister poll being the awesome mom she is got on line and found a recipe for pumpkin cheese cake and then put an oreo crust on it to make it pumpkin chocolate. It was so stinkin good. I love the polls.

Before i tell you about last weeks meetings and stuff i want to tell you about our new investigators! Lets just say the members of the essex ward have really caught the missionary fever. The fellows family had their friends  over for dinner and they asked if they could learn about their church. so of course the fellows said yes and called us right away. Well we were in manchester so couldnt go over so we called the polls and they played pinch hitter for us.They came to church yesterday and stayed for all 3 hours. They are like the ultimate golden couple.

So the meeting last week was great. Very cool to be in a meeting with president with just a small amount of people. like 24 missionaries or something very awesome. We discussed a whole bunch of stuff, but spent most of the time preparing for zone conference which is wednesday. Its a big deal cause we have a visiting general authority coming. Gifford Neilsen is gonna be in the NHMM. He spoke in conference and gave the awesome talk about the lords game plan. Guess who gets to have a personal 15 minute interview with him???... Yup i do. At each conference he is having a personal interview with 4 missionaries, and president chose me as one of them. I asked president what on earth i did wrong to have that ha. He just told me he wants elder Nelson to get to meet the best of the NHMM, im stoked. I think ill probably ask him how many touchdowns he threw when he was at BYU!

Probably my favorite part of the meeting last week was getting to see missionaries i havent seen in forever. I got to see elder hales for the first time since we got to the mission. Also got to see my buddy elder walker, they both just got made zone leaders as well.

Well i cant think of anything else i was really dying to tell you.

Love you guys

Hold to the rod