The Mansion at last!

Well we had many miracles this week! My personal favorite one, is we finally were able to get into the mansion :) We drove by and the gate was open so we parked really quick and went and knocked on the door. It was July 24th so they were here having a family party out back. Turns out they are all members and super active. They just aren't always at this home... they have a few. It is a really nice house! Really cool people too. We are going to try to have a p-day activity there or something. We just have to get a hold of them again, that will be the problem. Anyways, other than that we were also able to pick up two new investigators this week. One is really shaky, he was super high when we taught him but he accepted to have us come back so we will meet with him tonight hopefully. We aren't sure if he is in our area or not though so we might have to hand him over to another set of missionaries. I don't care though, it was great to find someone else to teach. We also picked up an investigator that Elder Williams had been teaching but transitioned him to the YSA missionaries who ended up dropping him, so we picked him back up. He's not really that solid either, but we will keep working with him and I know we can make progress with him, we will have to hand him back over to the YSA missionaries though when he starts making progress. Again, I don't care, if we can help them come unto Christ then that is all that matters. We are able to teach at least one lesson every day so its great. The work is starting to pick up even more in this area. My companion is awesome and I'm glad I don't have to train him as much as I would in some other cases. He already does a great job and I only have to correct him here and there. He's teaching me a lot too. I gave my first district meeting on Tuesday. I thought it went pretty well, I just took a little long with the training. I don't have to do one this week because of Zone Conference. I'm excited for that. Oh and then we will be having a mission tour in August. Elder Don R. Clarke is coming and so that will be cool. So we will basically just have another zone conference with him in a couple weeks. It's going to be great. Well that's about all I can think of for now. Enjoy the pictures, I sure did :) Have a great week! Love you all. -Elder McKinney

 The district...and Ryan who was baptized the night before Elder Williams returned home.  

Transfers!

Well, Transfers happened on Wednesday. My companion was transferred to Jacksonville, Florida. I'm not sure who his new companion is. It was hard for him. He served hard for two years and he didn't want to go home. Ryan was baptized on his last night though! It was a great way to end. We had a little time left in the night after the baptism so we went out and tracted for 20 or so minutes. So as for what happened with me, I am now the new district leader. I have 8 missionaries in my district counting myself and a senior couple. My new companion came straight out of the MTC. His name is Elder Laughlin from Lake Charles, Louisiana and I am his trainer. His 22nd birthday will be in August. He is a great missionary and I think I'm learning more from him than he is from me. I've got a lot of responsibility now but I know that the Lord will help me. So the greatest part of this week was the baptism of course. Tuesday was filled with a lot of meetings. Wednesday was transfers and I got my new companion. Elder Baclawski and Elder Harris stayed together. Sister Moberg went to my old stake in Kearns and Sister Mayall came here. Sister Mayall was one of the ones who took my spot in Kearns. It was good to hear about some of the things going on there, and I gave Sister Moberg a list of people to go by. Cat is still looking for a job, but we are working on doing everything that we can to help her find one. I know Cat will be blessed to find a job this week. There is an 11 year old girl that a family has been taking to church that hasn't been baptized. She wants to get baptized but we haven't been able to meet with her yet. We went by the other day though and found out she is going out of town for a month, but the mom (also not a member) asked what Malia (the girl) could do to prepare for baptism. So I have no doubt that she will get baptized when she gets back in August. Other than that we are looking for more people to teach. I know as we work hard and as we stay obedient that we will be blessed. I hope you all have a great week!
-Elder McKinney

Letter from the mission office...

We received this email today!  Very fun news!

THE CHURCH OF

JESUS CHRIST

OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Utah Salt Lake City South Mission

8060 South 615 East

Sandy, Utah 84070

July 20, 2014

David Brian and Allyson McKinney

680 West 10 North

Lindon, UT 84042

Dear Brother and Sister McKinney,

I am happy to inform you that Elder Joel Jensen McKinney has been entrusted with a new assignment as District Leader in the Sandy East Zone District 3 of the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission. He has also been called to be a trainer of a new missionary. I am confident that he will use and further develop his leadership abilities.

In this calling he will be expected to be an example to other missionaries under his direct supervision.  He will also instruct them in a series of lessons on how to teach the gospel and be effective as a missionary.

He will need your support and encouragement to do his best in this new calling.  He is growing in spiritual knowledge and wisdom and you have every right to be proud of him.

May the Lord bless you with the satisfaction that can accompany the sacrifice you make to have your son in the mission field.

Sincerely,

Robert E. Chambers

Mission President

Short letter!

Well, this week is transfers. Elder Williams is going home and I will get a new companion. I will find out tomorrow what the whole situation will be. I'm excited. We have a lot of work in this area and things will go great. Ryan is going to get baptized this Tuesday night. Cat is still working on finding a job, hopefully we can help her find one soon so she can be baptized. We also set up a lesson for tomorrow night with a girl who wants to get baptized so that will be awesome! We got to take Ryan and his mom to temple square. It was fun, they ended up being late so the sisters weren't able to do the tour because of other appointments so we took them around ourselves to show them some of the stuff. Man, I'm sorry my emails have probably sucked lately. I've got a lot on my mind and so I always forget what happened during the week. We did missionary work, I think that sums it up about right. So yeah. It was a good week. Hope everything goes well for y'all. Love you!

Pepperwood...

I can't believe that transfers are coming up so soon already. Only a little bit over a week left. Crazy. So.... this week. Ryan is still good for baptism on the 15th. Cat was accepted to University of Utah but is still working on getting a new job. She should hopefully get one within the next couple weeks and then get baptized a few weeks after that. We are still trying to find more people to teach though. We have pepperwood in our area, the really rich area that is a gated community and people were complaining about us going door to door and so the main guy in pepperwood called President Bishop in our mission presidency, who lives in pepperwood, and told him that if we kept doing that he would call the cops on us. So for now we can only knock on members doors, it sucks, but we are working on ways to keep working in there. I'm not too worried, the work will still go forward. Met a family in one of the wards that has a son serving in Clovis right now. We entered the MTC on the same day. Not sure which ward he is in though, the father couldn't remember. Its a different last name that I don't remember so I couldn't tell you who it is. Anyways, that was funny. So... yeah. Work is going good. Sorry to keep it short but I've got a lot to do today. Love you all! Have a great week! Oh yeah, fourth of July. It was awesome. Normal working day, but when it was night time we went up to a higher part of our area and we could see the entire valley basically and watched fireworks from there. It was possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I got some cool videos, but they are too big to send. So yeah, have a great week!!

-Elder McKinney