July 16, 2012 - Canton, Illinois

Dear Family:

 

Big news:  I am in Canton, Illinois!  My new companion is Elder Pass.  He has actually served in Mt. Vernon before me.  We talked a lot about what has changed in the area and had a great time talking.  I am also an hour away from Nauvoo and will actually be going to the pageant this Wednsday!  I am way excited about this and will take plenty of pictures.  Well to give you some information about my area I am about an hour west of Peoria.  It is a nice area.  It is still a little humid in the area and is still causing me some grief.  I am in charge of missionary work for two branches that are close together.  So far we have been doing a lot of driving to get to our destinations.  It was about two and a half hours to get to Peoria and then an hour to Canton to our appartment.  We drove an hour to get to our district meeting and will need to drive an extra hour out on some weeks.  We need to drive a half an hour to get to our other Branch area.  It is a little hard to sit for that long but at least I am cool.

 

Well so far I have met a few members of the branches.  They are both small and have an average of about 30 people in church per week.  They all want new members and are willing to help.  They for some reason don't like to feed us too much so we will be eating at our appartment for most of the time.  We mostly spend our time talking to less actives.  We do have some potential investigators but they are hard to get a hold of.  So far I like the people.

 

In other news I have said goodbye to two Elders that I have befriended in my last district.  One is from Holiday, Utah and his name is Elder Webb.  Another is Elder Melling and he is from Cedar City but he will be coming up to Salt Lake for school.  We are also expecting 18 new missionaries to come in for this next upcoming transfer meeting!  I may end up in a car share which will be hard but we still will be getting more missionaries.  Well that is about all that I have to report on.  I will send you guys some pictures soon and will take plenty while I am in Nauvoo.  Love you all!

 

Sincerely;

Elder Spencer Ariotti

7/9/2012 Mt Vernon

Hello everyone!  Hope this last week has gone well for you as it has for me.  This last week it was in the 90s or above.  We had a little bit of rain but not much.  It was still humid and that only made it worst.  We did a little bit of service and helped the city with their antique festival on the fourth.  It was hot all day and we had exchanges with two other Elders that day.  We mainly walked around and handed people free waters.  It was awesome to see how happy people were when we gave them a water.  I completely drenched my shirt in sweat and so did a nother Elder and we all went to the apartment and took cold showers.  It was a lot of fun.  We also went on exchanges with the ZLs and helped the rest of the Cedar Rapids Elders with their service.  We worked at the Habitat for Humanity service place and helped with their grand re-opening.  We also helped them with packing up some stuff to send to kids in Africa.  So that is pretty much it.  We did some work but mostly tracted our area.  Didnt see much success but at least we still did our job.  I also found out I am being transfered this Thursday!  I am really excited and can't wait for that.  I will let you all know where I am next week!

July 2, 2012 Mt. Vernon

Hello everyone!  It is getting hot in Iowa!  The temperature has been in the 90's all week and the humidity has been in the 50%'s.  When you have the humidity above 50% it is hot every where you go and you feel like you are walking through water.  I have not overheated at all and I dont plan to.  I have been hearing about those fires in Utah and am glad everyone is safe.  We have been having some fires of our own in some nearby houses.  Nothing to seriouse and no one has died.  On Friday evening we had a big storm pass over us.  That storm we had at the end of last year with those giant winds, those are the kind of storms that happen a lot in Iowa.  The thunder I heard was earth shaking and the wind and rain was just crazy!  We actually got grounded into our appartments for the night because it was so crazy out there.  They say that this is the price that people have to pay to live in heaven.
We did help a less active with removing some old carpet in his trailer home and that was disgusting.  He has three dogs and one of them is a little chihuaua (hope I spelled that right) and it has a small bladder.  We also helped a part member family with some gardening this past week.  As far as lessons go we had one good lesson with this part member family that we are trying to get reactivated and baptized.This next week the one exciting thing going on is on the 4th of July!  We actually have exchanges planned for that day with the district leader and we are also helping with the city antique festival for the day.  We also have a nice member dinner planned so that is way exciting.  It will be nice to get a little help for a day and to have some different people to learn from and teach with.  We also have a heratage day festival this saturday and we are helping with family history that day.  After that the city has a firework show going on so that will be a lot of fun!

Here is a quote I have from an Elder in my district that will be leaving for home in a week:

 

"Be excited to share the Gospel!"

Sincerely;

Elder Spencer Ariotti