I think I already said this last week, but my companion and I are both brand new to the area and this is one of the areas in the mission that has really been struggling the past couple years. So we got here and had NOTHING to go off of. My comp had spent the last 3 months on a no proselyting service mission so HE was even getting into the rhythm of things and it was really rough at first. We spent the time getting to know the members and meeting with less actives while sharing lessons with anyone we could. We only got like... 6 lessons total... then this last week we had over TWENTY!!! AAAHHH!!! And THREE BAPTISMAL DATES!!! MAN! So awesome :) 

Because it's so much easier doing it this way I have a couple passages in my journal that I'm just going to type into this email rather than try and remember everything I want to say. No that's not breaking any rules, and yes I was writing it with the idea that there would be other people reading it whether or not that was because I was sending it in this email :P (minor revisions made ^.^)

Jan 18 (Saturday)

Today was AMAZING!!!

Best part of today was meeting with Teaira. She's a single mom with two beautiful and hilarious little girls. One is 1-year old the other is 2. She's very athletic and is black :) (name kinda gives that away). We actually stopped by yesterday and she was so drunk! It was 8:30 at night so people usually start drinking since it's dark out. But it was really funny :) She just flat out said "I'm really tipsed. Can you come back sometime else?" So we showed up today instead. Good news is she only drinks about once a month so that won't be a problem. 

Anyway! We had actually biked about 5 miles to Jimmy's house and got there at 7 and he showed up at 8 so we were like "hey! wanna go to a lesson that we have with Teaira right now?" (Jimmy is an investigator that has overcome alcohol and tobacco over the last year and is getting baptized on Feb 15). So he came with us and we taught her for about 40 minutes. 20 minutes in Elder Erickson invited her to be baptized and she said no. She didn't feel worthy enough and thought there were tons of things she had to work out before she made that lifelong commitment. Jimmy and I just totally threw it down and I brought up the scripture "The whole need not a physician, but they who are sick" along with Ether 12:27.

At the end I invited her and she committed to be baptized on Feb 15! :D AHH! I'm so happy for her!

That lesson was the best we've ever had and Elder Erickson said it was the best he's had in these two years he's been on his mission! Not only were we teaching in PERFECT unison with each other, we were in perfect unison with Jimmy! We only briefly told Jimmy we were going to go over 2 Nephi 31 with her and he followed perfectly and was definitely being guided by the spirit.

...

Jan 19 (Sunday)

TEAIRA CAME TO CHURCH TODAY!

That was so awesome! I just KNOW she's going to be baptized! AHH! So exciting! :D

Yesterday, funny thing :) when we were teaching Teaira we told her that Gladys Knight was Mormon and actually performed at our church building last year for a two day concert. She just started rocking back and forth saying "oh my gosh... oh my gosh... oh my gosh..." (except not saying "gosh") for FIVE MINUTES! I have never heard someone take the Lord's name in vain so many times and actually been ok with it! :P So funny! It was almost awkward cuz she was just staring into space rocking back and forth...

I love it so much out here :) and although I really miss home and everyone there I am coming to love this place in so many ways.

Oh man! I've officially been a missionary for the same amount of days that Elder Erickson has left in the mission field... And I'm gonna be a missionary until December 22, 2015 just so y'all know. (*sigh* yes... I'm now a firm believer of the word y'all...)

Anyway, it's lights out soon so goodnights. I love everyone reading this 

Okay! Hope y'all enjoyed my email :) sorry it's so long I just love talking about this stuff and we get unlimited email time :D but we usually work it out to having two hours and that works pretty smoothly. 

Love you all! 

Elder Aaron Russell

WE'RE GETTING IPADS IN FEBRUARY!!!

That's all I wanted to add :) bye! ;)

Just some of 'the bros' Spencer Lehr and Tohi

Spencer Lehr and Aaron at the train station in Provo before heading out Jan 7th

Hello sister Russell. My name is Shawna Bradley. I have the wonderful opportunity to have your sweet son serving in our ward. He is an amazing young man and a great missionary. On Saturday all of the elders came over to help us get our backyard ready for our first real fireside by the campfire. They did a great job. Elder Russell really liked chopping the wood. I am so thankful to get to know him. When ever we have the missionaries over I try to take pictures of them to send to their mothers because I was really grateful when a mother in my sons ward sent me pictures os him. My son is currently serving in the Eugene Oregon mission. He’s been out for 5 months. Thank you so much for sharing your son with us. I truly love him as if he was my own.

Hope he has tight grip on that ax!! Yikes!!

The SECOND DAY I was in my apartment I got up, went into the other room to change, and looked up to see the depths of hell manifesting itself into the form of this DEMON!!!

......... GRR.

I set the camera to shoot RAW images just for a little experiment and forgot to set it back so I can't upload the last 25 pictures I've taken. >:( great. Well... I was GOING to post a picture of a wolf spider the size of my hand but it's a 28MB picture and I can only do 25MB pictures on myldsmail.net. That spider was the largest spider I've ever seen in person and the largest my companion has ever seen in a building. You get even larger ones if you go near the forests.

Crazy! This place is FLAT. I hate it -_-' I like to see MOUNTAINS! I'm DEFINITELY enjoying the heat but I'm ALWAYS cold! What's up with that?! I was so cold last night I got out of the shower and was shivering SO. BAD! for the next 30 minutes! I saw my first super drunk person :P they're my neighbors. We talked to her and she was slurring her words and looking at us all weird-like and kind of stumbling as she walked. It was 2 PM :/ 

So I'm not actually into this stuff, but we met Chase Hendrix. He's in our ward and was a professional skater for quite some time. He got his first sponsor when he was 11! 

My companion's name is Elder Erickson, he is TOTALLY Booth's doppelganger (the main character in Bones)! He also only has 6 weeks left so he can't train me for the full 12 weeks. Okay! I've had so many people tell me I look just like James Franco :P a couple people in the MTC were calling me Elder Franco occasionally and someone out here called me Elder Spider-man haha yeah.. But my companion and I are brand new to the area and mission work has been SO SLOW out here! It's AWFUL! So we've done nothing but tract and meet with the less actives and other members of the ward.

We have a car so I'm very happy about that! But we're in a car SHARE so we only get it every other week... We'll be on bikes the rest of the time so I'm gonna borrow one of the other elder's bikes for that.

I SUCK at talking to strangers! SERIOUSLY! ugh! I knock on someone's door and if they don't straight away say "I'm not interested" I have no idea how to continue! Everyone out here is familiar with the missionaries so we don't need to introduce ourselves but everyone out here also believes in Jesus Christ and has their own church so it's super difficult to get them to listen to OUR message.

We've only gotten 2 investigators and we're not sure if they'll progress at all. One is a single mom with two little girls. Her name is Teaira. She's black and super spiritual but doesn't have any church she attends regularly. The other is an older white lady named Lisa. She has several teeth missing so it's distracting watching her speak :P haha I guess missing teeth is super common down here. They don't bother with dentures. There are some people that don't have ANY teeth and some that you could grab any of their remaining teeth and just pull em right out because they're so loose! Thankfully I haven't seen any of those yet!

Anyway, final thoughts!

So we were at the ward mission leaders house doing yard work. We found this spider a little larger than a half dollar coin at the center of this massive web! The spider was BEAUTIFUL! It had black, white, red, yellow all in a mesmerizing pattern throughout its body! It's web covered about 6 or 7 square feet. We tossed some small leaves into its web to see what it would do and it was AWESOME! The spider left the center of the web and went to the leaves. But quite to my surprise, it started cutting the leaves out of the web! It would actually pick up the leaf (several times larger than its body) and begin cutting all the threads that kept it attached to the web. It continued to do this until the web was once again free of any debris and thus made it nearly invisible. 

I was thinking about this and then realized it makes a wonderful gospel analogy! :P As disciples of Jesus Christ we are commanded to keep ourselves "unspotted from the world", to be "in the world, but not of the world". How do we do that? We rid ourselves of worldly behaviors and fill that space with wholesome activities that bring us closer to Christ. That does not necessarily mean missionary work or going to the temple. You can become more spiritually in tune simply by being kind and friendly to others. Not using sarcasm or gossiping. Exercising and taking good care of our bodies is yet another way to purify our lives. And as we continue to do these things that draw us closer to God we are slowly cutting out the leaves that are corrupting our lives. As we receive the Holy Ghost in our lives we learn of its sanctifying effect and discover that it is only through Christ that we can make our garments white.

Farewell y'all ;)

Sincerely,

Elder Russell

I'M HEEEERE!!!

Hello mom and dad!!! (and anyone else who reads this) I got here alright so no need to worry :) we passed out a book of mormon and a pass along card on the plane ride over here and then I got lots of good ol' sleep :D the mission president is SO NICE!!! I LOVE him and his wife :) I KNOW I'm going to enjoy it here and I already love the people in Jacksonville so much! In the airport there's a lobby with no normal airport chairs! It's all rocking chairs or sofas and there was a black guy playing piano and sax and singing Louis Armstrong :D this place is just presh! :D :D :D it was so cute seeing the adorable old couples rocking together and everything :) anyway, I gotta go! I'll try and get a picture of me with the pres and his wife to you. Bye!

Sincerely,

Elder Aaron Russell

President and Sister Craig

January 3, 2014

Oof.... I can't even remember what happened this week and what happened the first or second weeks... WELL! We've been teaching a couple TRC investigators - one is named Jorge Delgado and is one of those people that gets paid to come here; but the other is TOTALLY a legit investigator!!! :D His name is Brian. But funny story how we met him... We went to go teach Jorge on Wednesday Jan 1 and he didn't show up :( it would have been our 4th lesson with him. He committed to baptism on the 3rd lesson :D I went to teach him with my comp and Sister Knoll and Sister Merchant (the brunette and the ginger). And since he didn't show up we decided to just socialize in the next room over and next thing we knew 20 minutes had passed :P Jorge still hadn't shown up! But then this random Hispanic about 20 years old comes up to us and says "hey... I was wondering if one of you could answer my question..." and Sister Knoll (she's very talkative) said "we ALL can!" he replied "How do you become a member of this church?" and at that point I'm like 'WANNA BE BAPTIZED???' but I didn't actually say it... We taught him about faith and repentance and Jorge showed up 15 minutes later. Then Sis Knoll and Merchant had to go teach someone else and so I kept teaching both of our investigators at the same time :) that's usually how it goes :P my comp was only recently PERSONALLY converted and so he doesn't know a whole lot about the doctrine and prefers if I do the explaining. I'm easing him into talking more. We ended up teaching Brian from 4:45 to about 5:35 and then we had to go but we wanted to keep talking to him cuz he was SUPER interested but wasn't quite ready to be baptized and I didn't feel like it was right for me to invite him to be baptized (which a lot of people were shocked about cuz you're advised to invite on the first lesson).

ANYWAY! We taught him again this morning and he said he met with two other companionships and they both invited him to church and invited him to be baptized and he turned both down (well... he said maybe to church) but then after we taught him that morning he committed to go to church with one of his LDS friends and he even committed to be BAPTIZED!!! :D :D :D :D !!! he doesn't want to set a date though. He believes the church is God's church and that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true and so he wants to meet with us everyday until we leave since he REALLY likes talking with us (not so much the other missionaries because he just gets confused with them). I'M SO SAD I HAVE TO LEAVE HIM!!! I'm going to give him off to Tohi or Elder Lehr :)

I gotta go! Love you all! Thank you for the prayers and the great support you've all given me! If you want to talk to me WRITE ME! I can't read a lot of emails cuz of time. BYE!

LOVE,

Elder Russell :)