Transfers!

Well, didn't get transferred. Neither did Elder Knowlton. We are both still here and doing well. Except for the fact that we start eating with the Samoan ward in a couple weeks and we eat with them for a month straight. I love the people, but I am going to struggle eating that much food. We will see though. It has been a great week! Nothing too new has happened, we taught a new investigator last Monday. We won't be able to teach her for a couple weeks though because of work. Samantha is still scheduled to be baptized this Saturday :) It is going to be great! Beaver we are still waiting for details on when they are going to get married so we can schedule the baptism. It should still be within the next few weeks. We went on a hike last week for P-day. It was really cool. We went up to a reservoir somewhere. Felt good to hike again, it's been too long! It kills me being so close to the mountains without being able to do very much. It's alright though, that's one of the perks of living in Utah :) after the mission. I finally learned how to solve a rubiks cube. It took a 12 year old to teach me, but I got it. I can do it in about 2 and a half minutes on average. I am working on my speed still. We have zone conference this Wednesday. That will be awesome! Elder Cleveland is in my zone now. He is still in the same area but our zone boundaries changed. It was good to see him again. I also went back to Kearns today for a haircut so I visited a couple people there as well. It has been rainy and overcast a lot the past couple of days. Had some hail here and there. Had a lot of hail/snow today. At least compared to the past couple of weeks. It melted pretty fast. I can't think of too much else right now, but I will send some more pictures. Have a great week everyone! -Elder McKinney

The little sister of the Rubiks cube master drew this poster for them...

Easter!

Its been a little slower of a week compared to the past few, but it has still been a great one! We didn't have as many teaching opportunities but we were able to take Sami to Temple Square. That is the first real temple square experience I had that wasn't cut short or in Spanish. So that was nice. The Sisters do a great job and Sami had a good time. The picture is kind of blurry and not very good, thanks to my camera, but hey, better than nothing right? It was a really cool experience though! Got to see more of temple square that I hadn't seen before so that was good. I'm trying to think what else happened this week... Oh yeah, we got to decorate Easter eggs with Sami and her family. I'll send a picture of my egg after this. We got to speak in one of our wards yesterday. That was cool, its been awhile since I've spoken. We are going to speak again this Sunday in another ward. We spoke about the Savior and his Resurrection and Missionary work of course. So that was fun! Then we went and shared the video "Because of Him" with everyone we could. It is a great video! If you haven't watched it yet I encourage you to go watch it now. It is truly amazing! It is on mormon.org, lds.org, and youtube and probably many other places. Other than that I can't think of too much that happened. Oh yeah we went on exchanges with our zone leaders. I stayed in the area with Elder Maestas and Elder Knowlton went with Elder Bridge. It was a fun exchange and a great day. Okay... now I don't think I can think of anything else to write... I hope you all had a great Easter! I know I had way too much candy that I ever needed. I'll be working it off for awhile haha. Have a great week everyone! Always remember what is possible "Because of Him"! Love you all.

-Elder McKinney

Preach My Gospel challenge...

This week has been good. Alfred was confirmed yesterday in church by his son. It was awesome! We were going to take Samantha to temple square but something came up and they had to cancel. We are going on Tuesday though so that will be good :) We are also going to try to go with Beaver. He will be baptized but he has to get married first. They are going to get married in early May so it will happen in the first or second week. We went on an exchange with the other elders on Wednesday. I finally went to the other area instead of staying in mine. I was with Elder Egley in their area and Elder Piutau came with Elder Knowlton in our area. It was fun, but I got sunburnt. They walk and it was a nice warm sunny day. There were two elders who were having their car fixed nearby and still wanted to work so one of them came with us for a few hours cause he used to serve in that stake. It was kind of weird, and I hate being a third wheel, but it was alright. We also had two dinners that night. I was full. Last p-day we went to a place called Airbourne. Not sure how to spell it. It is like Skywalk back in Clovis. Trampolines everywhere and dodgeball and all that fun stuff. Foam pit. I don't know what we are going to do today. We might play volleyball or something. It's starting to feel really nice outside. Had a bit of rain yesterday but nothing too bad. Hailed for 10-20 minutes. We have some more potential investigators that we just found as well so I'm excited to have some more people to teach. Lots of good talks in church about talks from General Conference. Elder Knowlton and I are going to speak in one of our wards on Easter Sunday, I'm excited for that too :) So, Elder Ballard challenged everyone to have a copy of Preach My Gospel and to study it, so I would like to hear what you all learn from it. Just something short if nothing else every now and then would be awesome! Thank you in advance! I hope you all have a wonderful week! Keep sharing the Gospel, Heavenly Father is preparing people all the time. Love you all.
-Elder McKinney

General Conference and a Baptism!

It has been a great week! Alfred I. was baptized on Saturday morning before the first session of General Conference. It was a nice baptism. It was mostly family there. His son was the one to baptize him and he will also be the one confirming him this next Sunday in church. I loved General conference! I can't wait until the Ensign comes out so I can go back and study them all again. I think the Priesthood session was my favorite one, but both of Saturdays come close. We watched conference with some of the families in the stake. Needless to say we got lots of food this weekend. I have never felt more full... until we eat with the Samoan ward at least ha. We have been working with Samantha M.the daughter of the woman that we re-activated, and she said she would be baptized on May 3rd. We have made a lot of progress with her over the past few weeks so this is great. We will continue to work with her though to help strengthen her. I believe I told you about Jordan last week as well, we haven't been able to meet with her since last time. Beaver is not on date anymore because he was saying yes because of pressure from future family basically and he said he's not sure he wants it himself yet. So we are continuing to work with him as well. We are going to take Beaver and Samantha to temple square sometime this week hopefully. Other than that it has been a great week and we look forward to another great week! I look forward to hearing about what y'all learned from General Conference :) Have a wonderful week! -Elder McKinney

In his short note to Mom, Elder McKinney explained that they had to share one computer this week so their letters were shorter...but he did thank me for the cinnamon rolls!  

Conference Weekend...Mom's version...

We have a conference weekend tradition of making Bisquick Cinnamon rolls (not my favorite, but Dave grew up on them so now have all my kids) and I was wondering if I got some to the mission home, how could I let Joel know they were there for him to pick up.  Lo and behold, I get a text one day from Brother Schwendiman (where Joel lives) and he says Elder McKinney requested cinnamon rolls for conference tradition and if I decided to do it, here's the address to drop them off!  Oh my goodness!  He gave me the address!  Is this a test for the mom or what?  ha ha.  So I made the cinnamon rolls and arranged to drop them off Friday evening while Joel was at his dinner appointment (and he was actually going to be out until 9 p.m.).  When we got there, I met the very kind Bro. Schwnediman and he said he had not mentioned to Joel that he contacted me!  So it would be a surprise!  It was fun to meet him and see where Joel is currently living (just a few blocks from the mission home actually).  I dropped off the rolls and a bottle of orange juice and we were on our way back down the road!  A fun Friday night date!  We stopped at the Sandy Costco on our way home (Who else does date night at Costco besides us?).  Here's a pan of our Conference Weekend cinnamon rolls...I guess without Joel here, we have leftovers!  Of course Dave takes the biggest ones out of the middle...ha ha.  What a fun weekend!  Can't wait for Joel's email today!!