Hey Kaden,

How is it going? anything fun or exiting happen? Not too much going on here just work & biking. Trying to get ready for the True Grit Race this Saturday. Right now Shanee and I are going up to Mantua I'm riding while she runs. Track has started and your mom and I have been looking forward to seeing her race.

Be safe and be careful.

Love Dad

Have you finished the shed yet?

No, I have finished the shed yet. I hope to work on it this weekend, if the weather is good. Just got back from St. George last night from the race. It was fun but very hard and my triceps are sore from having to pull up a lot to clear the terrain.  Have you been able to get in any exercise? Hope you can find some time to do so.

Be cautious and be safe and have fun.

So why is the drug dealer your most favorite person that you have met on your mission? Is he funny or something?

I know it is hard, but you know you need to be obedient to mission rules and try to understand why they are there. Or talk to the Pres about it so he can help you understand. I have heard that the most important thing for a missionary is to be obedient.

Sorry you have been sick!  Food poisoning sounds horrible. I have had it before coming out both ends like crazy when I was in college and ate some ham my roommate had in the fridge.  I had to tell my teacher I couldn't come and take a test because of it.

I took the kids to the bird refuge on Saturday and we actually drove the entire loop. We have lived here how many years and we have never done that!  It was swan day at the refuge where they teach you about swans and have crafts for the kids to do. We saw probably a thousand swans just out in the water so that was cool.  We saw Ky and Tals friends Seth and Ethan there so we were there a long time. Talmage really liked it and he has been making books about different birds all day today.

I am in this Harry Potter fitness contest that Lindsay and Jana are in with a bunch of other people I don't know.  You have to post all your "homework assignments"  on a private facebook page. Like defense against the dark arts, (how you obstained from junk food).  herbology (healthy recipe) and exercise using this website on the internet that has all these different exercise videos like P90X. It has been really annoying to have to post stuff all the time. I don't think its helping me much. I do like the exercise videos but Shanee wants to do them all the time even though she runs everyday.

We have been doing lots of yard work this past week since the weather has warmed up some. Trimming the apple tree. I've really missed you being able to help me with that  I'm sure you are not missing it. 

I guess Garett Ord came home from the MTC because of anxiety and they are trying to find something that he can do here as a mission. His mom has a lot of problems with anxiety too. They are so spiritual. I feel bad for their mental health challenges.

I am officially in young women now and got sustained today.  It will be a lot of work and time.

The missionaries (Elders)  stopped by our house last week when Kyler and Talmage were out playing soccer in the front yard. They asked me if they could do anything for us. I told them I was going to vacuum out that car and they said they would do it but I said no they didn't need to. I told them you were serving in Washington. One of them is from Washington so you guys traded places. I asked them if they wrote a lot to their families and they said not in the beginning but they do now that they can see the miracles.  

Have you been seeing the miracles on  your mission?

What have you guys been doing for service?

I'm sending you an Easter package so I hope you get it in time.  

I love you Kaden!  I am proud of you and your hard work as a missionary. I know it is a big sacrifice. I am so excited to be able to talk to you for Mother's Day! 

Share your testimony with us in your letter.

Love, Mom

The drug dealer is funny, and he is super fun to talk to. This week we finally got permission to continue teaching the Davila family so it didn't matter if we were breaking the rules or not, and our bishop told us that he didn't care if we taught them or not he said that mission rules are stupid. That sucks that Garrett left from the MTC I always thought that he would be a really good missionary, so he never went to Washington? Nothing too much has been happening in sunnyside, we have just been doing a lot more trackting recently because the new missionaries here get all of the investigators that we had been teaching for months, which I thought was really stupid cause a lot of them won't let the sister missionaries in because they are weird. Yesterday at church we had a lot of new people, we started teaching a couple named Ricardo and Tanya, they both came to church yesterday and they seemed to like it, they are both on date to be baptized for May 7. I really don't know what else to write cause that's pretty much it.

Love, 

March 6

Hi Kade,

I need you to write our family a seperate letter because we aren't getting anything personal from you.  We want to know the good and bad and your feelings.  It is really hard for me to have you gone.  I miss you a lot and think about you all the time, and of course I  cry  a lot because I miss you and don't know that much about what is going on with you.  So please write us a seperate letter then what you send out to everyone else you know. Just send us both letters and in the letter to us tell us some more personal details. I know you have limited time on the computer but I think you can do it! :)  And we are the ones who love you the most and are the most interested in what you are doing and how you are.
And when you send pictures tell us what they are of.  I was really worried that you had been in an accident when I saw the car with the broken windshield. So tomorrow I expect to read a much more detailed letter with some feelings and experiences in it from you!

Not much has been happening this week.  I scrapbooked with Andria on Friday and saw your pictures from your farewell and from pizza pie cafe.  It was really sad for me to see them.  I haven't seen Andria in a long time so it was good to visit with her.  Damon's girlfriend is dating someone else now so I think he is heart broken.  Andria is very sad about Tayten and she says she can feel his sadness from the spirit world about what he has done.  He feels sad and angry about killing himself and is sad about leaving his daughter and not being able to hold her or be there for her when she grows up. She feels his sadness so intensely that it is hard for her to feel happiness but she needs to and she wants to move on and wants him  to move on.  In her prayers she is praying to tell him to choose to move on and grow in the spirit world.  I have never thought about it like that before but we have free agency in the spirit world just like we do here.  And when we die we will still have to deal with our problems. I hope she feels peace soon and that he will start to learn and grow and progress in the spirit world. He will need the missionary discussions up there too.

How are your investigators doing and Tanya and her son doing?  And the family of 10?

In church today Brother Walker bore his testimony and he quoted President Hinckley when he was interviewed on national television by Mike Wallace who asked him if we believe that God talked to a 14 year old boy and President Hinckley said "yes, that's the miracle of it. God uses the unlikely to accomplish his miracles."  He talked about if we had a  business would we trust 18 year olds to do the work that we needed done. Most people would not do that but God does.  And you are doing awesome!   I am so proud of you and amazed at your hard work that you and your companion are doing.  I want to hear from you about your testimony and personal experiences that you have had.

It has been warming up a little this week and it has felt so nice to feel the sun.  Yesterday we went on a bike ride to the Willard bay dike for Shanee to run on.  Me, Kyler and Talmage went and about a mile into it we all had flat tires from all the stickers. But Shanee kept running and I had no idea where she was so I was pretty worried and frustrated for an hour.  I was worried she would just keep running around the whole thing.  Talmage found some mud and got totally stuck in it. His shoes were stuck and his bike so stuck that he couldn't get out.  I swear that kid can find mud anywhere. He has  been outside digging his "river" for a week. That is all he wants to do all day long. Even when its dark outside he tries to go out there.

Kyler and Talmage have been playing with  barbie dolls with their friend Sam.  I never thought I would see them do that. They are really silly. The barbies are married to the Hulk or Iron man or spider man.   

Love you Kaden and I'm so proud of you! Be safe and know that we love you so much! Love Mom

From Talmage:  Dear Kaden, we have moved the chicken coop. I like to look at it. I like making cookie dough. I make sugar cookie dough because it doesn't have eggs and I can just eat the dough. .....................................................................................................................:

From Kyler: Today at church we did a crossword puzzle and it was really hard in our sunday school class. For scouts we had to make a maze for a marble to go through. Me and Sam made up this game that was so much fun. In the game there is this guy and the guy gets money every night he survives. He gets $10 every night for surviving. And you can buy stuff with it and you make this base and weapons and you fight each other.

This week has been going by pretty fast, we haven't had too much luck with finding new people to teach, and since the area split the new sister missionaries took almost all of our investigators. We had a really good lesson with a woman named Phyllis and she has a really strong testimony of our church and has asked us to give her a priesthood blessing but she still doesn't want to join it yet, she says that she just takes a long time for her to "get things". This week all four of us in the apartment got food poisoning and I felt really hung over for the rest of the next day, we think that it was some tamales that we had from a member family in the spanish branch, one thing I have learned on my mission is to never buy anything from fiestafoods, because their food will almost always get people sick. The weather here has been really nice it has been about 75 degrees and sunny everyday. Tanya got really sick as well and she apparently had to go to the hospital so she hasn't been able to come to church for the last 2 sundays, so that sucks. The Davila family moved to Mabton which is out of our mission and is in the kennewick mission, so we are going to have to get special permission from the mission president before they can get baptized in our ward, the church has so many dumb rules that make no sense if you think about it, like for example with the davilas they are going to have to be baptized in the prosser ward which is another 30 minutes further than the sunnyside ward is. I just think if the church really cared about people's "salvation" they wouldn't let an imaginary ward boundary keep them from baptizing them and keep us from being able to teach them. This is why my companion and I have left the mission a few times so that we can still go over and teach them, our ward mission leader knows and he agrees with us, we just have to make sure that no other missionaries find out otherwise we could get in a lot of trouble. My favorite person that I have ever met on my mission is named Leo he is a drug dealer and he lives right next door to us, every time I see him he has a joint in his mouth and asks me if I want any weed. We talked to him yesterday and he said that he sold someone some "mormon weed" but he won't tell us who bought it. Me and my companion have been trying to figure out who bought it. In our apartment we have some new spanish elders and they are literally the stupidest people I have ever met, they are both the most socially awkward people I have ever met and their personalities are equivalent to that of a grape. The most entertaining thing to do out here on a mission is to mess with them or to try and bible bash with them cause they take everything that I say literally, like yesterday I told them that I was going to join the Presbyterian church and they believed me so on our way to church I stopped at the Presbyterian church and parked in the parking lot and they both just flipped out. This is about all that we have been doing this week.

Love,

Kaden

Febrary 28

February 28

This week they officially split the area of sunnyside so now we don't get to go through the whole city so now I am on the Eastern half of sunnyside. The sister missionaries have come and they got to take about 3/4s of the people that we were teaching, but that is good cause we had so many people that we had to get to and see, so we weren't able to focus on anybody. We were able to get a lesson in with the Davila family, we put there mom and 2 of her kids on date for baptism on march 30, but yesterday their whole family of 11 people came to church, and they all seem like they are pretty solid people so we will probably be able to get them all on date for March 30, which would be pretty awesome to get 11 people baptized all on the same day. We also got a referral from the Spanish elders of a family, they were named Ricardo and Tanya, we had a really good lesson with them and we put them on date for May 7, but we will probably be able to push their date a lot sooner. On Friday we were trackting an apartment complex and we saw a really tall black dude that ran over to us screaming that he was part of our church, and he wanted to prove it so he showed us his temple recommend, his name was Kingsley and he is from Nigeria, and we are thinking about taking him out to some lessons which would be really cool. He said that his favorite part about being in this church was that no matter where he went the church was done the exact same way. Our ward missionary just posted a bunch of pictures of the new sister missionaries and apparently there have been a ton of people that were complaining and saying that they wanted the Elders to come back and teach them because they were more fun and less awkward. Thanks for all of the valentines day packages, and it sounds like you guys had a really good time at the beach in California.

Love, Kaden

What up? Hope everything is going well, how was the authentic Mexican food?

As I mention to you early I've registered for the True Grit 50 mile race in St George which is less than two weeks away and I have not been training properly for it. Yesterday I rode around Willard bay and crashed. I was riding down a dirt lane approaching the paved boat harbor and there was a cable blocking the way that was not visible until I was right there and crashed pretty hard. It made me mad because there should be something on it to make it more visible. Today I am really sore from the crash but otherwise okay.

So, I'll remind you to be careful and pay attention to your surroundings. 

Love
Dad

Sounds like Kaden is doing really well!  And Kyler had an amazing time in Long Beach, too!  I hope you are feeling better.   I don't know if I have Kaden's mailing address, but I'll check my emails.    Thanks,  Love you,  Mom

February 28

Hey Kade,

Been thinking about you a lot and hoping you are doing well.  Have you been responding directly to people who email you or send you stuff?  I know Judy has sent you several packages so I hope you are thanking her and writing them. Grandma Harris keeps telling me she hasn't heard from you. She said she sent you a Valentine. Did you get our Valentine package? Jana says she wants me to add Andrew to your email list.

We made it back from California. It was 4 days of driving and 3 days of actually being there.  It was fun but the driving part was not.  Kyler and Talmage really liked the beach and we stayed in a nice motel that dad's work paid for, the Hampton. But we were pretty cramped all in one room with 2 queen beds.  Dad was in his class all day so he didn't get to do anything. I think the kids liked the beach the best. Ky and Tal liked playing in the sand. It felt really hot there but the ocean was really cold.

We have tons of laundry and clothes full of sand and now the dryer isn't working. Hopefully dad can fix it tomorrow.

Shanee is very stressed about her school work so hopefully she will feel better about it tomorrow after talking to her teachers.

In church today brother Watkins the seminary teacher was the only speaker in sacrament meeting. He talked about missionary work. He is the ward mission leader.  He talked about that we need to first work on ourselves getting closer to the Savior and then pray about who we can be friendly with and invite and think about how we can do that.  They want our whole ward to work on that this year.  He talked about how if you had breakfast at someone's house and they had fresh squeezed orange juice but they never offered you any. And you asked if you could have some and they said "Oh, I thought you didn't like orange juice and I didn't want to offend you by offering it to you." Of course, that is silly but that is how the book of mormon is.  It is sweet to us and  is to others too, we just need to offer it to them. He also made up another analogy about an old piano being bought by a family and being tuned and how it benefited not just their family but others as well as the family learned to play the piano more beautifu lly.  We are like the piano, when we work on ourselves to draw closer to Christ, we are tuning ourselves. And sharing the music with others is like sharing the gospel. 

They asked me to be the Beehive advisor today so I will be having a new calling. I have been in cubscouts with Kyler and that has been pretty easy. Young womens will be a lot more work but I will be with Shanee more so thats good. I have been worried about her going to girls camp this year without me so I guess that won't be a problem.  She still is struggling with being able to eat on her own.  I don't know what to do about her.  Keep praying for her

Love  you! Mom

From Talmage:  Dear Kaden, I have been at California. I saw pigeons. They ate my bagel and the pigeons fighted over the bagel with the seagulls. I love you!

From Kyler: Dear Kaden, When we went to California this week we went to the city of Los Angelas. We went to Knotts Berry Farms and they have lots of roller coasters. And my favorite one was this one that spun around like the Samurai. It was really fun and there was also this really fun one called the Silver Bullet and I went on it. And it was kind of like The Bat except it went upside down two or three times. And there was also one called the Accelerator and it went really fast. And it just shot up in the air and you could see lots from up there. And we went to the beach and I built a giant sand castle and Talmage did and  Shanee. And Shanee did body boarding and the water was kind of cold.In the water we found lots of shells. Cool shells. At church I got a prayer rock and I think its cool. When we drove to Los Angelas at St George I saw a big hare when we went hiking and dad went biking while we went hiking. And our hotel was really nice. It had a swimming pool and a hot tub and it had heated jets in the hot tub. And mom gave us licorice. And then mom got us a giant drink. At Knotts Berry Farm there is this ride callled the Boomerang that went up this hill backwards really slow and then it got really high up and then it shot us and then we went backwards twice upside down. I love you!


This week they officially split the area of sunnyside so now we don't get to go through the whole city so now I am on the Eastern half of sunnyside. The sister missionaries have come and they got to take about 3/4s of the people that we were teaching, but that is good cause we had so many people that we had to get to and see, so we weren't able to focus on anybody. We were able to get a lesson in with the Davila family, we put there mom and 2 of her kids on date for baptism on march 30, but yesterday their whole family of 11 people came to church, and they all seem like they are pretty solid people so we will probably be able to get them all on date for March 30, which would be pretty awesome to get 11 people baptized all on the same day. We also got a referral from the Spanish elders of a family, they were named Ricardo and Tanya, we had a really good lesson with them and we put them on date for May 7, but we will probably be able to push their date a lot sooner. On Friday we were trackting an apartment complex and we saw a really tall black dude that ran over to us screaming that he was part of our church, and he wanted to prove it so he showed us his temple recommend, his name was Kingsley and he is from Nigeria, and we are thinking about taking him out to some lessons which would be really cool. He said that his favorite part about being in this church was that no matter where he went the church was done the exact same way. Our ward missionary just posted a bunch of pictures of the new sister missionaries and apparently there have been a ton of people that were complaining and saying that they wanted the Elders to come back and teach them because they were more fun and less awkward. Thanks for all of the valentines day packages, and it sounds like you guys had a really good time at the beach in California.

 

February 21

February 21

Hey Kade,
We missed hearing from you last week. I'm assuming it was because of Presidents day. Where do you email from? We just got in the car to drive to California.  We are staying somewhere tonight on the way there.
I have been so sick this week. Sicker than I have been in my whole life. It started on last Sunday, a week ago today and I still feel like crap. I went to the doctor on Tuesday and she said it wasn't strep, just a virus. It got worse and worse. I had a thick stream of snot going down my throat for days. I was in such pain that I drove to the emergency room on Friday in the night. The doctor told me it was strep. I am so mad at the first doctor because I suffered so much pain for days. In the meantime Kyler and Talmage got it too and didn't get antibiotics as soon as they could have because I thought they had the same "virus". The thick mucus in my throat has changed from white to green to black. It yellow now and going away. I can tell you that antibiotics are a miracle and I am so thankful we have them. I wanted to die from the pain.

What has everyone been getting sick from that you are giving blessings for?
I brought the book of Mormon cds to listen to in the car. 
Love you and miss you! Ps I think Gareth Ord is home? We saw him playing basketball in front of his house. Maybe he is home for an injury or something? I thought he was one of the most prepared in our ward so I hope he is going back out.

That really sucks that you are all sick. I did send an email last week, i don't know why it didn't get there. We have been doing pretty much the same thing as we did when I first got here. I haven't gotten sick at all since being here, probably cause I have been drinking so much cranberry juice, for some reason I am addicted to it right now. We are going back up to the finches house for P-Day this week is transfers and they are bringing two new sister missionaries to Sunnyside so now they have to split the area in half and all of our most solid people are on the side that they are getting. Our zone is now completely changing this week because so many people here have already been here for 4 transfers, There will be a lot of new missionaries and I won't be the newest missionary anymore. Everyone around here has been getting the flu for some reason but none of the missionaries as far as i know have been getting it so that is good. The mission president's wife should have sent you a picture of me at our interviews with the mission president. Yesterday we had a lot of people come to sacrament meeting so that was really good, and we had a lot of lessons one was with a family and we watched the movie the testaments and they all seemed to really like it. One of their kids said that it was the best movie that he had ever seen.

I hope that you guys get better and have fun in california

Love 

Valentine's Day, No letter from Kaden this week :(

Valentine's Day

Hey Kaden,

Sounds like you are busy and working hard.  That is great to hear.  I would like to hear more of your spiritual experiences and feelings that you have and how your testimony has grown or changed.  

How is Tanya and her family doing since they were baptized?

Also label your pictures when you send them so we know what they are or who the peopel are! :)

We decided to go with dad next week to California.  I hope it is fun. The air here has been so bad. Like in the orange and red levels where you shouldn't go outside. My allergies are so bad. I must be allergic to pollution.  We did have some snow today that cleared the air here and it felt so good to go outside and walk around. Hopefully in California it will be sunny and nice.

Yesterday we went up to Snowbasin. Dad rode his bike, Shanee ran. and me and ky and tal walked around.  It was nice and sunny up there, not foggy and cold like it has been here. There were a lot of people up there probably trying to get out of the pollution like we were.

We made valentine sugar cookies and Talmage made a heart cake for Valentines Day so we have had lots of sugar today. I made roast beef today and you weren't here to eat it so I don't know what I'm going to do with all the meat. 
Talmage's teacher at church told me that he stood up the entire time of primary, including singing time.  He says he did it because he was bored.  That is something Shanee would do so it makes me worried.  I told you he has been acting strange lately.

Did you get the Valentine package we sent you?

Chad called and he asked me if he wrote you or emailed if you would respond back and I said I don't know.  He doesn't answer any of my questions.

Lots of people asked me how you are doing today at church. I had to do a little write up about you for the ward newsletter.  

Today was ward conference. President Eddignton spoke and he gave a great talk about how when we do hard things, especially those things that we are scared to do but know we need to do, we are creating a miracle.  The way he said it made sense.  He used a scripture from the bom that says something like that. It went so well with missionary work. I'm sure it is scary to have to open your mouth and talk to people all the time but you are creating miracles in peoples lives.  Like Tanya and the other people you are teaching.  The gospel is the greatest blessing they can ever receive in this life. 

I love you!  I'm very proud of you.  Love, mom 

Hey Kaden,

how is everything going? So are you living in an apartment or someones home?

Looks like next week we will be in CA I've got to go for work while Mom, Shanee Ky and Tal go have fun.

This Thursday is the Simplot games Shanee is running the two mile if she makes the finals we will need to go back up on Saturday.

Anyway hope all is going well be safe and pay attention to whats going on around you.

Love Dad

Hey Kaden, how is it going in Washington? Lots of things have been happening this week like at school we had registration for tenth grade. My electives are weightlifting, orchestra, pottery, health, spanish 4, fit for life, and Part Skills.

On Friday I had a track meet at the Olympic Ice Oval in Salt Lake. I ran the mile and I got my PR 5:27.

This Saturday we went to Snow Basin because the air has been really bad this week. The air has been defined in the red zone. The air is good now though because it snowed/rained yesterday and last night.

We did not do anything for Valentine's day but my school gave every girl a flower on Friday which must have been expensive.

Hope you had a good Valentine's Day, did you get to do anything for Valentine's Day?

Hope you find lots o. people to teach that will listen to you and your companion. :) 

Love, Shanee