6/19/12 Bye Bye Deming - Ames

Well, im leaving the state of new mexico, it wasnt a very long stay but that is ok (That rymed, unintentional)

Im going back to Tucson and will be serving in the Tortalita ward in the North Stake. Ill give you some more info when i get there. Are you wondering who my new companion is? Non other than Elder Ranger! They couldnt keep the St.Georgeians apart :D Should be a fun transfer. Im not excited for the 100+ temperatures though, that will suck.

Im sad to leave some of the people here. The Girl that "Zoned" my feet and her husband are super duper cool so i will miss them. We went to their house last night and made Sushi :D that was really fun. Ill send you pictures when i get to the north where i have better computers.

Im walking away from a baptism again :( such a bummer. Our Investigator is going to get dunked this saturday. Should be an awesome thing for him :D

Not much more to report on. Have Fun this next week.

Love you all!

Elder Ettinger

Making sushi

Looks tasty!

6/18/12 Kyle

Dear Family,

 

First off, elder king and i are both staying this next transfer! So dont worry about mail not getting to me, because it will. ha my favorite roommate is leaving us though! its super sad! And alot of the friends ive had in the zone are leaving as well. ALOT of people are getting moved around this transfer. Its going to be crazy, so i am pretty glad that i am staying put again.

 

Today for p-day we are going to have a water fight at one of the church buildings! i am way excited! i havent had a balloon fight for like 15 months!! super nuts!

 

So you found out that kim nelson paid me another visit huh? it was only for about 20 minutes this time, so no worries. He also passed through this morning, but didnt stop or anything.

 

Elder king and i are really looking forward to this next transfer. We are going to re-evaluate our efforts, set some new goals, and also try our best to be more and more motivated to work hard. So all of your prayers will be accepted with joy let me tell ya!

 

Sounds like the trip to NC was a pretty good time, but also sounded boring to be honest ha looking at appartments doesnt seem to be the best time spent in the world.

This past week i've really been thinking..."man..if i could only buy back that 10 minutes i just wasted" i am really trying harder to focus on the work, and not the "Fun" exciting times of the mission.

 

I talked with elder bowler for the last time on the phone last night, he will be flying into st george tomorrow morning! Its really crazy that he was training me a year ago when he was 13 months out on his mission!

I hope everyone is doing well and having a good time!

Thanks for everyones prayers and support! it means so much!

Love, Elder Kyle Ettinger

6/11/12 Kyle

Dear family,

 

Hey there folks!

 

This past week flew by so fast!! i dont understand how the time just keeps going by so quickly! This past week was pretty funny, because i went on exchanges three times! On wednesday we had exchanges with our zone leaders, the day went well and we got a new investigator! who is way nice, and also wants to get her mom involved in the lessons. her best friend is serving a mission as well, so thats cool.

The next day, i had to go down the hill for a leadership meeting, Where alot of the missionaries going home in a week, trained on things they have learned alot of in there own missions. It was only elders there, but it was cool because two sister missionaries were able to give trainings to the elders.

 

And then on saturday, i had exchanges with or district members. So its been a pretty busy week!!

I cant believe that transfers are already coming up next week!! the 19th in case anyone was wondering.

Like ames, i also gave a talk yesterday, my topic was on how giving service can be a missionary opportunity. I was only asked to speak for 10 minutes, and i think i ended up doing about 15, so it was pretty cool.

I love this gospel so much! i am growing so much as a missionary and as a member of this wonderful church!

 

Hope all is well! be safe traveling to NC!! enjoy your time there.

 

Love, Elder kyle Ettinger

 

 

Hot and windy days in Deming, NM 6/11/12 Ames

So its getting super hot here and im not liking it all that much, its
also super duper windy here which you would think would make it seem
cooler right... nope its a really hot wind and dries everything out.
NO bueno.
This last week has been a pretty good week. We set up a baptism
for this friday! really excited for that. We still have to teach him a
few more things before his interview on wendsday but we will squeeze
them in there :) We are hoping that this baptism will help the ward
jump back on board with the missionary work, they are struggling to
help us out with the work. We will see what happens.
I got to give a talk down in Columbus yesterday. My topic was the Book
of Mormon and i needed to fill up a 20 minute block. I Prepared my
talk thursday friday and saturday and i wasnt feeling like i was going
to be able to fill the time. I havent ever done a 20 minute talk
before. So sunday rolls around and im a little stressed about it so i
Prayed that i would be able to be stress free and that using my
preparation and notes that i could fill the time. Almost instantly the
stress went away and i felt good about the talk. When the Sacrament
was over i got up to speak and only looked at my three pages of notes
once or twice. The spirit guided me from one topic to another as i had
planned it out. During the talk to i for some reason never looked down
at my watch to see how much time i had left. After i was all finished
up i checked my watch as i was walking back to my seat. 30 minutes!
Oops haha. I was really excited to see that what only seemed like 15
minutes was alot more. :) Gotta love the Spirit.
This last week we had Zone Training. We talked alot about planning
effectivly for our days and weeks. We also talked alot about Kneeling
prayers. This training was a lot diffrent from past trainings because
it was from 1 to 8:30 with a three hour break where we went out with a
missionary in Silver City to "Put what we learned to the test." I
really liked the setup and we had a really successful night. Lots of
fun too :D
I cant belive that we are already back to the last week of a transfer.
Elder Handerhan and myself are more than likely going to do one more
together. But iv said that in the past and it didnt mean anything :)
So we will see next sunday if we get a call or not.
Time is going by too fast, 13 months next week!
Love you all!
God Speed!
Elder Ettinger



that story that dad told in his email where we went off into the snow
covered ditch. as soon as we all knew we were going into the ditch.
dad says, "This is not going to be good guys" in like a super calm
voice. hahahaha good times with the boys!
love ya!

June 4, 2012 Ames

I cant beleive that it is already june! Before we all know it we will
be dead! haha
This week was a really awesome week for us. We were able to find two
new investigators, and one of them will be getting baptized on the
16th! we are super excited about it. He is a 9 Year old and his mom
and grandma are Members and the Grandma is coming back to church. We
are still working on the mom because her working schedual is pretty
lame :(. We will see though. The boy is really excited to be baptized.
Got to love the miracles. :D
We also met a bunch of our weekly goals and it was a great faith building week!
We went out to the farm this last week. Planting :D. it was tons of
fun. We had to plant two rows by hand and then we helped brother knoop
plant the rest in the tractor. We had to walk behind the planters and
make sure the seed was going down the shoot and into the ground. I was
super interested in the Mechanics of the system so i asked him about
it, he told me the system was super old and that newer ones were even
better. Fun stuff on the farm!
Today for Pday we are going to do some bowling. Super stoked. Hopfully
i can get some sweet pictures :D.
Love you all so MUCH!
Elder Ettinger

June 4, 2012 Kyle

Dear family,

Alright so i am very upset right now, the computers we are on are
being mega slow, and i just got done typing up the whole email to you
guys, and i accidentaly hit the backspace button while i wasnt
"clicked" into the page, so it went back a page and didnt save the
email, so now i have to start all over again.

I just gave one of my missionary buddies a hug to calm down, because i
was freaking out in the library. ha

Anyways, the past few weeks have been pretty good, we have been able
to teach a few lessons to our investigators, a family of 4. They have
started to keep there commitments so we are pretty excited about that.

Sounds like the ranch was a really fun trip! i got the post card from
maren and sarah today. Thanks for sending that, the picture was pretty
cool!
I am excited to be able to go and do some cleanup stuff at the ranch,
maybe burn down a few trees.

For p day today we were able to go up to big bear lake, i was incharge
of it, so i had to arrange the rides for people to get there. I also
packed my small grill on the hike, and grilled hot dogs at the top of
the rocks. Pretty sweet!

I have to go down to a leadership meeting again, seems like i was just
at one of them though. 

I wrecked on my bike two days ago when i was on exchanges. I was doing
a pretty sweet jump, landed wrong, and went down into a hole and
indoed over the handlebars. I just scrapped up my arm, and one of my
legs. So it wasnt to bad. lesson learned though.

Sorry if this email is short and slightly lame, i am just super
stressed right now, wanting to make sure i at least get something to
you guys.

Thanks for all of the support and love! and prayers!
I hope you guys have a good save week!!
I cant believe this transfer is almost over! two more weeks
Love you
  Love, Elder kyle Ettinger

Kyle hiking with his BBQ strapped to his back

Nice suspenders

Silver City - Ames 5/29/12

Obvioulsly we are emailing today because of memorial day yesterday. Im currently on an Exchange with the Zone Leaders and im up in Silver City. Its about an hour north of deming and is higher in elevation and is alot cooler then Deming. Its alot greener here as well which is super nice. Pine Trees are an excellent change :). This last week has been a pretty good one. We had a less active guy call us and told us he wanted to meet with us. We went over last friday and he told us he wanted to start coming back to church and he wanted to meetwith us to have "Scripture Study". We got him a ride for chuch last sunday and he came! super cool. His wife isnt a member and seems really nice too :D. Its always motivating to have some success. This last week was Fathers and Sons as well, we arent allowed to camp as missionaries so we didnt stay the night but we were able to go up for the dinner and the fireside. It was really fun to go and do some fishing as well. You all will be proud of my catch. It was a Lunker.

So last week i forgot to give you all (Yall) the details of my "Foot Zoning" it was super duper cool! It took about an hour for each of us and she could pin point alot of diffrent injuries, past and present. She can also tell if you have any caveties and which tooth they are in by looking at the insides of your toes! luckly no cavities for me :D She can tell how you handel stress by the tops of your feet, spesficaly how you handel stress. She was able to tell me exactly how i handel stress, super cool. Im definatly going to research it a bit when i get home.

Crazy conection last night. Up here in silver we went to the YSA FHE last night, and there was a kid from deming up visiting. (He is in the other deming ward so i didnt know who he was) While we were sitting there he got a text from his cousin that said something to the effect of "Hey, this kid i know that is serving in the arizona tucson mission just got transfered to deming a few weeks ago." He then asked me how long i had been in deming and so i told him a few weeks. and So he calls her up and asks who the missionary is... Elder Ettinger. His cousin is a girl that i went to highschool with that has mutual friends with me. Nuts! The world gets smaller everyday.

Glad to hear that the ranch has fun things going on! Dads Wildfire sounds a bit bigger than the one i almost started the week before we left for the MTC. Crazy Crazy.

Hope ll is well in the real world :D

Say hi to all the ranch folk for me :D

Love you all!

Elder Ettinger

Ames at the Mexican border

Arriving in New Mexico

Ames's view of the eclipse

"The Lunker"

Ames 5/21/12

Officialy One Year OUT!
its so crazy that kyle and i are half way through the mission, it
seems like just a few weeks ago we were pulling up to the MTC and
getting rained on. Time sure flies. Yesterday just before sacrament
meeting a lady who i later faound out was the bishops wife, came up to
us and asked if i would be "Lamoni's Father" in her primary class and
to explain to the kids the story of the Anti-nephi-lehi's.... im not
good with kids... and im not good with acting anything out... and to
put some extra embarassment i had to wear a costume made out of some
spare cloth... Needless to say, i was stressing out during sacrament
when the second counciler called me up to introduce myself and share
my testimony... great. The rest of the meeting was me fumbling through
scriptures to get my story strait and praying. When sacrament ended i
went into the bathroom and put on my cloth and headed to the primary
class. It turned out really well :D i just followed my notes, and the
kids didnt even know what i was talking about anyways so more power to
me :) it was fun. It reminded my of my primary class back home. Good
times.
    We are struggling in our area to find new investigators, we are
trying tons of diffrent approches with little luck, but we keep
trucking on.
    Last night we were picking up some other missionaries and a
neighbor lady came out and asked us if we were watching the Eclipse. A
member at church mentioned it but i totaly forgot. So we checked it
out. All we had were sunglasses so it didnt work out all that well.
BUT, i couldnt let it go away without taking pictures! I ended up
getting some really cool ones. Lots of fun :D
Today for P-day we are
Hope you all have a great week!
Have fun at the ranch!
Love you!
Elder Ettinger

ps. i would send pics but this computer is slow...


i forgot to look at my notes to see what i was supposed to tell you.

i saw president Lunt this week. That was fun to talk to him again. He
says hello.
he mentioned the Ten scrolls of success and how he taught them to his
students in highschool and said "One of those students was locke
ettinger, elder ettingers dad" haha that was pretty cool. love that
guy

next package you send i would like those Buzz and Woddy lego guys we
have :) i have quite the lego collection going on :D

whats brother fry's first name? Robert? i think it is. if so he may
have baptized a less actice guy here in deming. He would have baptized
him in el paso. small world.

have a great week!

Kyle - 5/21/12

hello Family!

 

This past week has been pretty slow, we were able to get a return appointment with two less active families, that we are hoping to be able to see this week. As well as a couple Former investigators.

 

THe biggest event for this week is that a day after my year mark in the mission, our toilet decided to flood over! and usually it stops overflowing when the back bowl fills up again, well ours decided to not fill up, which meant the toilet kept over flowing until i finally realized i needed to turn off the water! The resulted in about an inch of water in the whole bathroom, and alot of water in our carpets!! Woo!! i immediatly got to work cleaning it all up, and we had a fan running on it for the past 48 hours, and it is finally dry! Good times!

 

For P day we are probably going to just hit up some thrift stores for ties, play some games, and just relax today. We were going to get up at 4:30 this morning and do a sunrise hike at the mormon rocks, but the APs didnt give us permission. That was a real bummer.

 

Congrats mom on finishing the race!! I cheered for you from california! just so ya know!

And thank you for the package!! i wore the shirt the other day, and enjoyed the crackers and stuff!! Thanks again for keeping the elders of the family happy!

 

Thats crazy that everyone is getting married all of the sudden!! seems like mike and damien just got home! so thats really weird!

 

Thats pretty cool that you guys got to see the eclipse, i didnt hear anything about it at all, so that was news for me!

 

Sorry this email is a bit short this time, i am hoping we can see some more miracles this next week!!

 

Good luck everyone!! Be safe and have fun!

Love Elder Kyle Ettinger

Great to hear your voices - Kyle 5/14/12

Dear Family,

 

It was a really fun time talking to you guys last night,

Since we pretty much covered the things that ames and i have been up to, i can just say that today for P-day we are playing capture the flag at our church building, i am pretty excited for that!! We will also get our shopping done sometime today. And hopefully find some time to do laundry as well.

 

I really appreciate the love and support that i get from all of you guys! like ames said, there are some missionaries that hardly ever get emails or mail from there family, i really am blessed to have such a loving family! and i dont think there is anyway that i could give you guys enough credit for it!

 

Mom, the hike that you went on looks pretty awesome!! i miss able to go hike whenever we want to. hopefully this transfer we will be able to arange to hike castle rock in big bear sometime. It would be nice to take a break from the heat for a day or so, It would just be a really long drive from Hesperia though.

 

The chickens are getting really big! thats pretty cool how fast they grow!

Be sure to keep the bugs down to a minimum though mom.

 

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!! I pray for you all the time!

Love, Elder Kyle Ettinger

 

Elders Rodgers, Blamires, King and Ettinger

Fun Times - Ames 5/14/12

It was really fun to be able to talk to you all yesterday. IM glad
that even though we were all in diffrent areas that we could still
come together as a family. I dont think that many missionaries know
how to set up confrence calls like that. The Ettingers rock! I had
forgotten that you all were going to the ranch soon. Im sad that i will
be missing out on that. Like always, take lots of pictures, especialy
of the bears! and eat some black berrys for me! We have a tree outside
of our appartment that has some sort of berry on it, they are pretty
tasty :D
Elder Handerhan and myself have the goal to get a baptism by the end
of the transfer, and so that would mean that we would need to get a
new investigator with a date by the end of this week, AND we just got
a referal last night from the spanish missionaries for a lady they
tracted into that sounded really promising and i had a great feeling
about her when he was telling me all the info on her. Super excited to
go talk to her tomorrow. So for pday today we are probibly going to go
bowling, should be fun. and then tonight we are going to a recently
reactivated couples house for FHE. She works with the hands and the
feet and she can tell whats wrong with your body just by looking and
feeling your feet. so she is going to do a session with Elder
Handerhan and myself tonight as well, should be interesting, ill
report on that next week :D
Love you all lots and lots.
Make the next year the best year and leave with no regrets!
Elder Ettinger