Week 20 12-15-14

     So to answer your questions: we are still in the same zone and work in the same area and everything but we are in a different district because this district meets in our chapel and our previous district met in the stake center and I'm still not entirely sure why the switch happened but that's ok. :) It just depends when or not we're able to teach them because anything could happen like: not there, no time, etc. And they have to have at least all five of the preach my gospel lessons taught to them. THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR THE CAMERA!!! I used it the day I got it to take a picture of this FAT raccoon outside our apartment! :D And no details on Skype and whatnot yet but I will have details by Monday!

     Monday was awesome as always playing some intense basketball with our zone! Hahahaha I love basketball now! Me and some other elders mainly just run around the court really fast passing and blocking because we're not very good at shotting its the best!! :D :D Haha I love our zone though we are all so close. :) We rehearsed our district skits for Tuesday's Christmas zone conference too and that was hilarious! So for the Christmas zone conference, after all of the training by President and Sister Jensen and the APs, every district in all of the Des Moines and Ames zones do a skit that involves a Book of Mormon story. :) After p-day was over we went and read 1 Nephi 21 with Madison and whoa! I'd definitely like to encourage you guys to study that chapter, mainly verses 14-16 because it...is...POWERFUL! It was so cool to read. :) Tuesday, we had zone conference! We had an amazing training and message from everyone and then we had skits! Hahahahahaha man it was the best thing of my life!! But a lot of people told us that our zone won!! WOO HOO REPRESENT! Ours was a combination of some of the parts from Ammon's and Aaron's stories in the Book of Mormon, acted out and sung to the tune of none other than "Tribute" by Tenacious D! It was pre-approved by the APs and words were changed to go along with the story obviously. :) Hahaha we brought the house down! And then the other district in our zone did Nephi and his brothers going back to get the gold plates with a Star Wars theme and Star Wars music playing the entire time! They used awesome light up lightsabers and everything! Hahahahaha I got a cramp I was laughing so hard!!! :D :D It was the best! Quote from "Darth Coy" (Elder Coy) "Once mooore.....the Sith will rule Jerusalem and we...shall...have...peace." Zone conference nearly took all day but we were able to go and give one of the sister's investigators, Janet the sweet, blind lady, a blessing because she has had a couple of nervous breakdowns and that was an amazing experience.

     Wednesday, we visited Curtis briefly in the hospital before he had surgery to replace his hip and then we came home for the rest of the day because Curless was running a super high fever and migraine. I learned how to play some more songs on the guitar in that time though! :D Thursday, Curless could barely get out of bed so we weren't able to do anything that day either but that night his fever finally broke and Friday morning he was finally better! :D Friday, we went and visited Curtis in the hospital and he was tired but everything went well so that's good. :) We then went and did a bunch of finding but sadly only three people answered their doors. Haha one was an Indian guy who just looked confused but took our card anyway, and the others were two little girls maybe like 5-6 years old whose parents weren't home but they took our cards. After that we went and read the Book of Mormon with Madison and he is in 2nd Nephi now!! YES!!!

     Saturday, we had our ward Christmas party and it was a breakfast!! It was a lot of fun and we got to be in the little Nativity skit and that was a blast! And after nearly everyone had left and everything was cleaned up, Sam and "San" (apparently that's how her name is actually pronounced) showed up and we had apparently forgotten to give them the correct time of the Christmas party so that was our fault. :( But we gave them a church tour and talked about baptism and they both loved it and said they would come to church! Then we went with our zone leaders and helped move a less-active lady's sister and that took WAY longer than expected but we still tried to do some finding but no one was interested. :( SUNDAY WAS AWESOME!

     We went to ward council and then to sacrament meeting! And halfway through the meeting guess who shows up? None other than Sam and San!!!!! And whats even better is they brought their mom and little brother! And they were all dressed up really nice in shirts and ties and dresses!!!!!!!!!!! And then talking to them afterwards, they all LOVED CHURCH A LOT!!! It was super cool how Sister Pym in our ward was an amazing fellowshipper to San because she just "took her under her wing" and helped her out with everything and invited their family over for dinner and it was awesome! :D We then went to the Craypo's home for lunch and had crockpot lasagna! Then we tried to find a referral that we'd gotten from our ward clerk Brother Andersen but it was out of our area so we gave it to the Easter Lake elders. That night, we were able to go to a stake choir thing in Waukee that is similar to our "Night of Sacred Music" and that was awesome and the Spirit was so strong there. :) But there is the week in a nutshell!

Love,

Elder Logan Flake

Week 19 12-8-14

     YAY SAAS IS BACK IN THE GOOD OLE' U.S. OF A!!!!! Huh its weird to think that she is a missionary no more.....awesome. :) And THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the new camera! Sister Shelley at the mission office called saying "Elder Flake you have a package and we live like ten minutes away from the office so I went and got it. Hahaha when I opened it up the first thing I said was YYYYYEEEEEESSSS!!!! Guess what happened..................................ELDER CURLESS AND I ARE GOING ONE MORE ROUND IN DES MOINES!!! HOOOOO DOGGIE!!! YES! I'm so glad that we get to be together for one more transfer I love the dude to death! :D :D

      So Monday was a normal day, not p-day, because of transfer calls that week and we did service for brother Vaughn cleaning up his place. We then went and visited the Brown family of our ward and that was a blast! Their little boy, DJ, is 9 years old and he has some sort of handicap but he is the sweetest and looooves the missionaries! We shared a message with them and it was extra awesome because we were able to connect with the dad! He hasn't been to church in a number of years so it was really cool to see him get touched by the Spirit. :) I love being on a mission! Then we went and contacted a referral from some elders in Houston, Texas and it was awesome! So his name is Sam Aye and he is 14 years old and was being taught by the missionaries in Texas before he moved to Des Moines. We recapped the Restoration and he loved every minute of it! The even more amazing thing is his sister, Sam Win who is 20 years old, wanted to listen as well and they both ended up accepting the invitation to baptism!!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!!

     Tuesday, I had a cold and was really sick ALL DAY so we weren't able to do anything at all. :( Hahaha Curless is a goober. So while I was taking a nap in the afternoon, he randomly strung rubber bands all over my bed and made it kind of like a trap because he wanted to see what I would do when I woke up and saw them all over the place. So when I woke up, my first thought was "huh?" And I just couldn't figure it out! Because my mind wasn't really functioning that well cuz I was sick I suppose. But elder Curless just busted a gut laughing at my confused face. :) But by the time 8:00 p.m. rolled around I was finally recovered. :)

     Wednesday was p-day and that was a blast! Hahaha we were all trying to figure out what game to play next at one point, then we decided to play mofia. Hahahaha man I love my zone they're so much fun! It was hilarious and we all had a blast playing it! :D That night, we went and read the Book of Mormon with Madison again and that was fantastic as always too. :) Thursday, we went and did Mormon.org time and then we went and saw Curtis and read out of the Book of Mormon with him again. :) He has been getting really nervous about his upcoming hip replacement but some of the passages we read with him were comforting and really helped to calm him down. Man the Book of Mormon is amazing. We then contacted some referrals and even set up a return appointment with one of them! :D :D Then we helped brother Spencer jump-start his car because it was dead and he ended up inviting us over for dinner that night and we were able to go and share an awesome message with him!

     Friday elder Curless was sick so while he slept, I learned how to play the guitar a little bit because we randomly have one lying around our apartment. :) He was better that evening so we went and were FINALLY able to contact Mike Borah, he is a referral from nearly 5 weeks back who wanted the Book of Mormon and we haven't been able to meet with him because crazy stuff always happened whenever we try, and we gave it to him and had a really good lesson on the Book of Mormon! The only sad thing was that we learned that he'll be gone for nearly six months traveling the U.S. but we were able to get the Book of Mormon to him literally a week before he left! Talk about an epic miracle! :D

     Saturday we had our get to know you district meeting and that was a blast! We got switched to the Easter Lake district and they are a lot of fun! :D After lunch, we did a random unplanned exchange and so elder Hoskins and I stayed in the Easter Lake area and elders Curless and Clark went to our area. We did some finding, but not a lot of success, then we went to the Easter Lake ward's Christmas party. Hahaha I got lucky that they were having it that night I guess. :) Sunday we went to church and that was awesome! I love fast and testimony meeting! And that night we got to go to the Christmas devotional broadcast!!!!!

Love,

Elder Logan Flake

Week 18 12-1-14

Thanksgiving with the President and office staff

Thank you thank you thank you for my snow boots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Literally the day after I got them, we got like 5 inches of snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sounds like a lot of fun as usual! Hahaha that's great that mom and Heather both preg tested, hahaha that picture of Heather's face is priceless!! :D And to answer your question Mom, they are all struggling less-actives, there are so many less-actives in the ward that the only thing our Bishop wants us to do at the moment is trying to get them in a good habit with reading the Book of Mormon. This week was super amazing!!!! A little slow at first but then.....MIRACLES!!!

     Monday, we had p-day and it was a blast!!! We played some epic basketball and trash ball (which is kind of like ultimate Frisbee), and then a bunch of us sang at the piano and watched elders Garner and Mkenna have an epic lightsaber duel!! Hahaha yup! Then we did some finding, nothing came from that sadly, and then we went and read with Madison from 1 nephi again. He is doing so good and FINALLY starting to read a little more on his own now! :D YES! Tuesday, I got my snow boots in a package! :D Which was a total miracle because the next day the heavens unloaded six inches of snow on us out of nowhere!! :) We contacted a bunch of referrals we've received from the office but sadly no one is interested. Sometimes I just wanna be like, "C'mon people! This is salvation!" But you do what you can y'know? Haha yea. :) That night, Royal took us out to A Dong. a really amazing Vietnamese restaurant! :D

     Wednesday was awesome!! So first off, we were getting ready to do our companion study that morning and we were like "what should we study? Hmmm....the Atonement!" So we had like an amazing hour long deep discussion on the Atonement and it is so amazing! All of the stuff that the Atonement does for us and enables us to do is just jaw-dropping! Best study of my life! Then we did service for Brother Vaughn, cleaning up his yard and then decorating it with Christmas lights and that was a bunch of fun. :) Haha ever since I've come to Des Moines its been awesome because members are always like "New elder! Yes free service!" Its been a blast! :D Then we did a bunch of knocking on people's doors, I think that Iowans hearts get a little cold during winter :P and then we went to the Diaz's home for dinner and had spaghetti. :) It was awesome because their dad John, who is not a member, whenever we've come for dinner he has never been interested in any of the lessons that we teach the rest of the family. But that night as we were talking about just random religious stuff, he was totally interested and asking questions! YES! Hopefully it continues!

     Thursday was Thanksgiving! :D :D :D We had a short district meeting at 10:00 and elder Coy gave a fantastic message about the power and authority of our calling and it was super awesome and a spirit slap in the face! After that we went to the mission home and had dinner with the office missionaries, President and Sister Jensen, and the APs. Hahaha no one in our ward invited us so President took pity on us and invited us to their Thanksgiving. :) It was a blast! Hahahaha president Jensen is absolutely hilarious!!!!!!! :D After that, we went with our zone leaders to a Hispanic member's home (the members told the ZLs to invite other missionaries), the zone leaders are in a Spanish branch, and had Mexican Thanksgiving! Chicken, enchiladas, and tamales! Haha I gained like 3 pounds that day. :(

     Friday, we went with elder Stringham (office missionary) to Norwalk, Iowa and got a couch from the missionaries there to put in our new place because we didn't have one. The couch took over an hour to get from the curb outside to inside our apartment. Even with the ZLs helping us, we somehow managed to scrape a little paint off the walls and break a light because the couch was so big!We're fixing those today though so no worries. :)  Its a hide-a-bed couch so it weighed about...oh fifteen tons? We then went and read the Book of Mormon with Curtis and that was super awesome as well. :) Oh and here is a random example of what a goofball elder Curless is. So itsFriday morning and I'm just sitting there reading the Book of Mormon. I suddenly hear elder Curless making these weird noises from where he was reading the Bible on the floor. The next thing you know, he starts acting like a zombie and tries to eat my leg! So naturally I fended him off with a Nerf sword, no big deal. :) Yup we have a lot of fun together. :)

     Saturday we got haircuts from this place called PlatinumKutz! Its a barbershop run by all these super legit black guys that were absolutely hilarious! I sit in the chair and the guy was like "Hey how you doin? My name is Royal and I be cutting yo hair today!" Hahaha best hair cut of my life! Then we went to a baptism that Elder Garner and Mkenna had and I saw....................ELDER HOLLAN! So Hollan's current companion, elder higbee, was Garner's previous companion and had been teaching this guy getting baptized so they'd gotten permission to come down from Waverly for it!! I saw him and I just stopped. He goes "Son?" Then I said "Father?" Then we ran toward each other and hugged and it was awesome being able to see him again! We talked for a little while after the baptism, it was good to see my dad again. :) AND THEN SUNDAY!

     Went to church (which was amazing and awesome!), had lunch, then went finding in 20 degree weather! We were like "Alright, weknow that we can find at least one new investigator if we put our trust in the Lord." So we did and went and knocked doors for nearly four hours, the weather dropped down to sixteen degrees, and we found THREE! One was Wilbur, a super awesome kid who was totally amazing and a boss! And the other two are Eduardo and Diego, these two Hispanic guys who were totally open to learning and asked really good questions and are really interested and awesome! At one point Diego directly said "I don't even know why I wanted to jog over to Eduardo's house tonight but I just felt like I should, and I think that God wanted me to meet you guys." YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!

Love,

Elder Logan Flake

Week 17 11-23-14

YES WE"RE IN THE FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT MAKES ME SO STINKIN PUMPED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(The Lobos that is, our High school football team)  No snow boots yet unfortunately. :( But yeah our old place was disgusting and run down because missionaries have been living there for seven years and its pretty trashy. But I love the new pad!!!! Its all hardwood and tile! No carpet for missionaries to mess up!! :D Haha missionaries and carpet do not get along well at all. :) Our area is huge! Its all of downtown Des Moines and the entire east side of Des Moines as well!!! I love it so much!!!!! And unfortunately we were unloved in the ward and no one invited us over for dinner but a bunch of the senior couple office missionaries are putting together a big Thanksgiving lunch and invited us as well as some other missionaries who were unloved as well. :) Hahaha the hilarious thing is the two sister missionaries in our ward got like three invites to Thanksgiving, thereby proving that sisters are loved more. :) Hahaha nah just kidding!! So here is the week in a nutshell!

     Monday we had p-day and that was super awesome like always! Haha with elder Coy's help-he is my district leader-I totally learned how to play "Let it Go" on the piano! Yes!!! We tried to see some potentials after p-day was done but nothing happened unfortunately. :(Tuesday we cleaned up our old place some more-there was SO much junk we've had to get rid of-and we went and saw Curtis and read Ether 1 with him and had a super amazing discussion on it with him and that was awesome!! Hahaha Curtis just kills me! :D But literally like fifteen minutes after Curtis' lesson, I got SLAMMED with a  migraine! I got dizzy and saw spots and everything and I was like "Whoa we need to go home Elder Curless my head hurts." So we did because I couldn't function. But the next day it was finally gone so that was better. :) Wednesday we went and saw a LOT of potential investigators but nothing happened with that unfortunately. :( That evening, we had dinner with the Jensen family from our ward, and it was awesome! So brother Jensen said something like, "Alright Elders, whats your spiritual thought for us?" And we told him, "Actually this is going to be a little bit different." And we just had an open discussion with them about member missionary work, their fears with doing it, how to overcome those fears, etc. It was a little bit of a new approach that we have been getting trained on, not just share a message about missionary work with the members, but actually make it a discussion and talk about it more deeply than just a simple message on it. It worked really well and we were able to get some really solid commitments out of the lesson and it was the best!!!! Then we went to go check up on Royal to see how he was doing and we ended up totally teaching his roommate Zac the Restoration with Royal! Talk about a blessing in disguise! His roommate has never been there before!!!!!! The Lord works in mysterious ways! :D :D :D :D

     Thursday we had an AMAZING district meeting and some really good role-plays on the new curriculum with member missionary lessons and it got me even more super pumped, if that's possible to be more pumped than I already was, to help members out and really work hand in hand with them with missionary work!! :D Then we had dinner at the Vela's home that night (brother Vela is our high priest's group leader, he is loud, Hispanic, and absolutely hilarious!! :D) and it was super awesome! They gave us the most amazing fried chicken I've ever had in my entire life! They had also invited some less-active members of our ward to so we were able to see how they have been doing. :) Then we hustled on over to Curtis' house and read Alma 5 with him and had some good discussions on the messages in that passage with him. Alma 5 is an amazing chapter. :) That night, elder Hollan had permission so he called me from Waverly and told me that Kevin was getting baptized in two days!!!!!! He also told me that Brad and Angie were dropped though. A member friend of theirs was at their house the other day apparently and he saw the Book of Mormon in the recycling bin and Brad and Angie aren't interested anymore. To be honest, that one sent a dagger through my heart a little bit and I might have cried a little bit, it was pretty sad to hear that I love Brad and Angie so much.

     Friday we CLEANED! We finally had a lot of time and so we had to devote it to deep cleaning our old junky place and we finally finished! Man it took like five and a half, almost six hours!!!! But its finally done and we can FINALLY focus more on missionary work stuff now because we are done with all of the apartment stuff! :D YES!!! :D :D Hahaha funny story real fast: so we went to grab a carpet cleaner from elders Coy and Hayden and they were coming back to their apartment and we totally AMBUSHED them with nerf guns!!!! Hahaha man I've never laughed so hard in my life looking at their faces when we rushed them! :) Saturday, our entire district painted Terah's house and then we had stake conference that night and it was super awesome! :) Sunday, we had stake conference again and it was really cool because the main thing that all the speakers talked about was temples and the importance of them and it was awesome. We tried some more people, the Craypos had us over for chicken fajitas, and then we came home. :)

 I JUST FOUND OUT FROM PRESIDENT JENSEN'S E-MAIL THAT KEVIN WAS BAPTIZED AND CONFIRMED ON SATURDAY THE 22ND!! I'm so happy I cried a little I'll admit!!

Love,

Elder Logan Flake

Week 16 11-17-14

    Awesome awesome about the dedication and the concerts and whatnot sounds like a fun-filled week in good ole' AZ as usual! :) This week was a smidgen RIDICULOUS!!! So we moved apartments because ours has been a missionary apartment for like seven years and it is REALLY run down and we found a new one and got permission to move. :) The majority of the week was mainly cleaning and moving almost every single day there is so much junk in there.

     Well first off a funny story! So at the church with the other elders and sisters in our areas on p-day we played ZOMBIES! So what we do is two people are zombies and try to tag you to make you "zombies" and all the normal people are armed with Nerf guns and swords. Hahahahaha so there I was with two nerf guns ready to take down some undead and I was soooo jumpy and then people would be like "Behind you!!" and I would totally scream "AAAHHH DIE DIE DIE!!!" and waste that zombie with nerf darts!!! Man it was the best!!!!!! Hahahaha I was super jumpy and got waaaaay into that game. :D :D :D Tuesday was super awesome because we had interviews with President and Sister Jensen and that was super duper awesome being able to talk to both of them because after I was done with that, I just felt super uplifted and it was just good to talk to them. They are just super amazing. :) Then we went and had a really good lesson with Curtis on repentance. We were planning on reading the Book of Mormon with him but we ended up talking about repentance and it was really good for him I think. He has been struggling with some stuff. :( Then we went to Madison's place and read the Book of Mormon with him and had a super good discussion on that too. :)

     Wednesday was awesome!!! We, along with the craypos (senior couple in our ward), had an AMAZINGLY FANTASTIC lesson with Lindsey about prayer!!! She has never really felt like her prayers have never been answered and she has always had to do things on her own but elder and sister Craypo totally shared some awesome experiences and then we were able to help recognize how God does answer prayers! :D She is still on date for December 27th as well!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D Thursday we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and then we had some extra time and brother Vaughn totally helped us make ties! It was super awesome!! Then after that, we cleaned even more. :) Friday, we had a mission tour with Elder Craig A. Cardon of the Seventy! We went to the Des Moines Stake Center and Elder Cardon, Sister Cardon, President Jensen, and Sister Jensen talked to us from about ten until four and it was awesome! I can honestly say that I have never felt the Spirit more strong in my life than those six hours it was AMAZING! The church is totally true!

     Saturday we finally moved!! Using Mason Diaz's minivan we got the majority of our stuff over and we slept there that night!!! Hahaha so a couple of funny stories from moving on Saturday: Mason and I were carrying one of the mattresses down a kinda steep hill (oh by the way at this time its been snowing for like 4 hours straight) and I almost slipped so I was like "Whoa! Be careful man its slippery!!" Then about five or so seconds later, he totally wipes out and just slides down the hill and our mattress slides down after him! Hahahahaha it was hilarious!! And then our apartment key broke in Curless' pocket somehow so every time we need to get in our apartment Curless boosts me up and I climb in through the bedroom window! :D Hahaha! And when we were turning into our street once (we were with Mason in his minivan) the car didn't turn for some reason and we slid right into a telephone pole!!!!!! But the crazy thing was that the car only got scraped a little and the fog light fell out but nothing else!! No dent or anything! Isn't that crazy??!! So yup that's the week! We weren't able to do much missionary work because of the moving so hopefully when we're done cleaning our old apartment we can have time to do that again. :)

Love,

Elder Logan Flake

Week 15 11-10-14

Digging out tree stumps

Bathroom signs at "The Zombie Burger" 

    Awesome awesome awesome about football!! I hope this is the year!!! :D :D And to answer your question mom, it would just be super legit to learn how to play Zelda songs on the piano because they are super pretty and awesome! :P Idk its just an idea though. :) And we mostly do our own door-to-door finding but we've had some good member referrals here and there. :) Hahaha I love the picture of the cows on the porch that is awesome! And the walkway looks great too!!!! So this week was a little crazy!!

     Real fast sidetrack: on Monday we totally got to play golf for super cheap because some of the West Des Moines elders had golf clubs and bags in their apartment and balls and the fee was a good price! :D It was the best!!! Monday wasn't very productive unfortunately no one was receptive. :(  Tuesday we did the English class thing again and that was interesting teaching a Japanese and a Mexican lady about our system of government cuz it was almost election day. Fun fact about Iowa: they go craaaaaaaazy over political stuff! There have been posters and banners up the wazoo all around Des Moines!!!!! We had dinner with Curtis after teaching him and then we did a bunch of finding and it was hilarious cuz 3out of every 4 houses we knocked on they were all either Buddhist or Hindu and didn't speak almost any English!! Haha man Iowa is diverse! Wednesday we did some service at terah's house, she is an investigator of the sisters who is getting baptized on Saturday! :D, doing a bunch of yard work and it was the best because I totally got to use a HUGE heavy duty leaf mulcher and it was a blast!! :D Then we went on exchanges with our district leader and his companion, Elders Coy and Hayden. Hayden and I stayed in our area and we went and taught Lindsey with some members, Sister Burgess and her son Brooke, and it was totally awesome because it was a super powerful lesson about the Book of Mormon and how it can bless our lives.

     We then found a few AWESOME potential investigators and had a blast! Elder Hayden and I actually came out together so that was fun to bond with him. :) Hahaha because we were in my area I got to drive and it was a little bit sketchy at points because its been some time since I've drove on a freeway but we were fine. :) Thursday, we studied and then went out at the cold hour of 10:00 and found some more good potential investigators and then we went to district meeting. We had an amazing district meeting on retention of converts which was super good because we haven't really got much training on that yet. :) Then we went and taught our blind investigator Janet and we gave her volume one of the six volume braille Book of Mormon (or as we named it, the Braille of Mormon) and had a good lesson about the plan of salvation with Mason Diaz (another member). We then gave her to the sisters because Janet apparently lives in their area (oops). They weren't mad though. :) Then we had dinner with brother Nate Spencer who is a super legit member of our ward who goes to Des Moines University, which is a really good medical school. He totally fixed the knots in my back without kneading them and pressing them and making it hurt! All he did was lift my arm in some certain way and I apply a little bit of pressure and after a minute or so the pain was gone!! It was awesome!!!!! :D :D :D :D Then the weekend came and all of a sudden we got slammed with service!!

     Friday we did more yard work at Terah's house, then we went and helped the Robinettes move one last time (for real this was the last time, they're moved now) and it was kinda sad to say goodbye. :(  That night, a member of our ward who prefers to remain nameless, took us to the fanciest restaurant in Des Moines!!!! A five-star restaurant called the Chop House!!!!!! Hahaha he totally taught me how to eat fancy and properly and that honestly might be the best meal I've ever had in my life. IT WAS FANTASTIC!!!! The steak was amazing!!Saturday we did more service, helping Terah one more time and then helping out brother Vaughn, then we took brother Spencer to a lesson with Lindsey and oh man! It was awesome!!!! Brother Spencer is a spiritual powerhouse and a half!!!! We set a baptismal date forDecember 27th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     Sunday we had church, Lindsey was sick so she couldn't come, and Madison came to church! He hasn't been for like three to four months!! :D :D We then went and saw a member's sister-in-law who was in the hospital and gave her a blessing with him. She has breast cancer and is in her late 40s but she looked like she weighed less than 100 pounds and she couldn't be much bigger than a 10 year old kid. But it was really touching because it was a beautiful blessing and we were all tearing up and when we shook our hands she kissed them. Haha it was a little unusual but still really cool. :) We then had dinner at the Craypos (beef stroganoff!!) and then we tried to contact some potentials but they weren't there. :( But the weekend was FILLED with service! :)

Love,

Elder Logan Flake

Week 14 11-3-14

  Sounds like a totally fun-filled week! :D That's funny about the weather who knows maybe we'll get a snowless winter again. :) Its starting to get a bit nippy here in Des Moines the wind is a bit chilly. :) So I don't have very much time cuz laundry and other stuff took longer than normal and we still gotta do a bunch of stuff so i'll try not to rush too awful much. :) This week was super legit! We read out of the Book of Mormon with Abinadi (isn't that the most legitly amazing name ever??!!!) Aguierre-he is a Hispanic boy in our ward-and that was a blast the Book of Mormon is the best!! Then we went with Brother Spencer-he is a total boss-and read out of the Book of Mormon with Madison again, we read twice a week with him and it was super awesome! Tuesday we gave service helping people learn how to speak English it was the best!!! So every Tuesday at one of the libraries here, we go and we help all these Vietnamese and Chinese and Japanese and African people learn how to speak English it was super fun!! Hahahaha man those guys are funny. :) We then went and read the Book of Mormon with Curtis and then we went to the Poole's house (members) and ate dinner and then talked about their fears of doing missionary work and how to overcome them. We then gave them some pamphlets and invited them to pass along two of them by November 8 and they were totally willing!

     We then helped the Robinettes get rid of MORE of their stuff and then we went knocking. Hahaha so one of the houses this little Asian lady answers the door and says, "I don't speak English I'm Burmese have nice day." And then she kindly shuts the door. Hahahaha we were like "....ooookkkk?" The funny thing is we've ran into a bunch of Burmese people this week! Des Moines is so diverse! We then went with Brother Greene hometeaching and totally got a potential investigator from the lady that we were hometeaching's sister!! YEA YUH!!! Thursday we had an AMAZINGLY FANTASTIC zone training meeting and like two hours later we totally met this awesome girl named Lindsey and using the training we'd just gotten about inviting to baptism on the first lesson, she totally accepted!!!!!!!!!!!! That night we went to the Diaz family's house and played Scrabble cuz it was Beggar's night so we couldn't do anything else. So Iowa has the 30th of October called Beggar's Night-which is when all the kids go trick-or-treating and such- and then the 31st of October is Halloween. So its kinda like two holidays one after the other-idk its weird-but both nights at six o' clock we had to be inside our apartments and stay there unless we were with members. But the Diaz family was like "oh we can totally pick you guys up and you can come to our house and play board games and such." They totally saved us from epic boredom for two nights straight! :D

     We did a lot of yard work for the sister's investigator-Terah-Saturday morning and that was a bunch of fun just raking leaves and moving gravel and belting out Imagine Dragons songs. :) Then we helped the Robinettes with their big moving all the furniture and stuff to their new house and now they're nearly all done with everything! Oh and it was so awesome cuz I finally met Sachigo! She is this older suuuuuper sweet and nice little Japanese lady staying with them. :) Hahaha she is the best! Then we went to some of the Easter Lake elder's baptism and Lindsey totally came!! And she thought it was really cool!!! Then on Sunday she totally came to church and really enjoyed it too!!!! WOOT WOOT WOOT WOOT!!!!!!! After church we did a bunch of finding and the only person we really met was this HILARIOUS older guy whose name is........wait for it.......you'll never guess it........MICHAEL JACKSON!! For real thats his name!!! Hahahaha he ended up not being interested cuz he is a minister for another church but he was super awesome! We then went to try to contact a former investigator but found out that he had moved and the guy who lives there now is a member who has been inactive for like 10 years but he was super appreciative of us dropping by. :) We then met this super nice blind lady named Janet and had an awesome discussion about the Restoration and she totally accepted the baptismal invite! Awesome awesome awesome week!!!!

Love, 

Elder Logan Flake