Letter #58 . . . 'twas a peachy week!

Hey fam bamily! 

Another short one today . . . 'twas a peachy week!

Taylor K. is still meeting with us, and loving the church! She's so awesome. We are going to start teaching that Dalton guy who's Taylor's friend! 
 

Goodbye to Amosa! :(

Said bye to Amosa this week! I told him to give you a big hug for me! That's awesome you got to see him. I listened to his talk. Such a cool guy! 
 

Transfers were this week, we are still together! We're super happy cuz we're pals. :)  
 
Weather's been crazy. Won't stop raining. It's crazy, first big storms of the year! I love the rain out here! 

I'm happy and healthy! Loving life these days. 

- Tan

March 26, 2017

PS. We attended Amosa's homecoming this past Sunday and here is a photo of our two youngest boys with him. He did a great job and we could tell he was a fabulous missionary!  

Letter #57 . . . best day I've had in a long time!!

Hi Fam!

Taylor's baptism day, March 18th 2016

Thanks for the letter! Short and sweet letter today! This week was special! Taylor was baptized Saturday! It was amazing, and was the best day I've had in a long time. I'll remember that day forever, that's for sure! She had like 10 friends come, some members of the church and some not. It was an awesome turnout. Her mom even came! Taylor had the biggest smile on her face the whole time, you could see it in her face that she loves this gospel. Her readiness brought the Spirit so strong into the meeting! Her mom seemed on edge at first and it was awesome to see her whole countenance change and relax throughout the meeting as she felt the Spirit. 

Elders Amosa, Griffiths and Tanner!

Me, Griffiths and Amosa sang "How Great Thou Art", and I played the piano. It was so fun! Click here to listen! I'm going to miss Amosa! We both spoke a bit on Baptism, and a member of our ward spoke on the Holy Ghost! Taylor said she felt a "breath of fresh air that felt so good" after she came out of the water! It was cool, after the baptism we got a text from Matt who baptized Taylor. He said one of Taylor's OTHER friends that was at the baptism now wants to take the lessons from us because of the Spirit he felt at the Baptism! Wahooo! Super cool. I'm hoping to stay here in Maryville with Griffiths another transfer! 

That's good dad's anxiety workshop went well! I'd love to have been there! Did you record it by chance?

I'm so glad to have a knowledge of the Restored Gospel. I'm grateful to know I have a father in heaven who knows and loves me. 

Love, Tan

PS.  Here is one more video that Tanner sent . . . of him walking into Walmart with no shoes . . . this is sooo Tanner! haha :) Watch here!

Letter #56 . . . Tornadoes and Birthday week!

Familia and Amigos!!

Far West, March 2017

Twas another great week out here! Some highlights . . . Taylor Kicksey is still on date for the 18th and is excited! Her parents are fine with it, and she's prepared! This week we met with her and taught her about the Word of Wisdom, Chastity, Tithing, and the structure of the church. She asks some pretty great questions which makes it easier and more fun to teach! We went to the Far West Church history sights that a few of the D&C revelations are from, (the Far West temple site) you all should go read those in D&C! Just search Far West in gospel library and click on D&C! It's cool! There's a Deseret book type store there, and we bought 
Taylor some gifts for her baptism. At the store, I found the property records 
of John Tanner! He used to live here in Caldwell County Far West! I'll attach a pic of the
records. (See below) Super cool to be serving in areas where my faithful
ancestors once lived, and gave all they had, for the building up of the kingdom!

Tan and Elder Griffiths

Our mission was hit with a few tornadoes earlier this week! It was pretty sketchy. We ended up driving home through the storm and pretty much drove away from it. Our area Maryville was under lock down, but we were fine. But one of them did some pretty serious damage in Oak Grove I heard, which was part of my last area, Blue Springs! Damaged or destroyed over 500 homes apparently. Not sure if anyone was injured or not... If anyone can go look online and find more info about it, please let me know I'd love to know more haha. IT'S TORNADO SEASON BABY! NOT SURE IF THAT'S SOMETHING TO BE EXCITED ABOUT, BUT HEY, TORNADOES ARE CRAZY COOL AND DESERVE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

My District Leader/ trainer Elder Amosa and I went on our last exchange this week. He's leaving to go home this transfer, in 2 weeks! He's one of my best pals out here. He lives in South Jordan, and has an amazing voice, and am going to be doing some covers with him that'll go on Spotify. I'm pumped. He's awesome. :)

Mission buds at Zone Conference!

Also turned 20 this week! It was a great day, thanks for the package momma! I loved the pics you sent of me when I was a kid. Haha I love those. :)

Much luv, till next week!

- Tan

PS.  These photos are of his Far West tour and Zone Conference with his Mission and Stake President!

His zone!

Add caption

Far West

Tanner and Elder Griffiths

Letter #55 . . . Zone Conference at Adam-Ondi-Ahman

Hey familia!  

I sure miss all of you. This week was a great one, and I'm loving 
serving the Lord and the people of Missouri out here!

Zone Conference at Adam-ondi-Ahman in Davies County, Missouri

Highlight of the week... After church we met with our awesome investigator Taylor! She is the most solid, most truly prepared person I've taught on my mission. We had a great lesson with her, answering her questions, and really digging to find out where she is spiritually. We told her we've been praying and feel like she is prepared for baptism, and could be baptized on March 18th! Her eyes lit up, and she said, "Ahhh that would be so cool!!" 
So yeah, that was definitely a first. :) I'm so flippen excited. MARCH 18th! 
She is amazing.

Reading the BOM again, and am loving it more than ever. I'm in Mosiah
8. I'm loving Grandpas book, "Learning to Love the Book of Mormon"
I've read most all of the supplemental articles and am learning a
ton! I've also been reading the commentary of a chapter, then reading
from the actual Book of Mormon and I understand it a lot better! I've
shared it with a lot of elders, and they are all blown away by Gramps
and how smart he is. Everyone in the fam should read it! It is
SERIOUSLY cool. Let Gramps know us missionaries love studying from it!
Is that book being sold anywhere? I feel like it needs to be exposed to a ton 
more people!  Here is the link to that book! 


Amosa, my trainer (the 6-6 Samoan dude) is going home this transfer.
He's my district leader! He's so awesome. One of my best pals out
here. I've loved serving around him again. We have an awesome district
and zone! We're the Far West Zone! It's cool serving where my
ancestors like John Tanner lived at one point. I'd love to learn more
about any other pioneer type ancestors I had! Mom, ask Paige and
Grandma Carolyn to send some cool stories of our ancestors that were
in Missouri at one point, or anywhere in church history! I've been
thinking about Grandma Carolyn a lot, and really miss her! You all 
give her a big squeeze from me.

We as a zone had zone conference at Adam-Ondi-Ahman! It was so 
cool, we all spread out and found a spot on the grass, and took like a half
an hour to study and read our patriarchal blessings! It's cool to see
how much more sticks out reading my blessing that I just totally
overlooked. My blessing is short and simple. Which kinda bummed 
me out at first. But I'm realizing it's showing me that if I simplify the
heck out my life and go back to the basics, it'll all work out. So cool.

Much luv, till next week!

- Tan

Letter #54 . . . sorry doTerra . . no hard feelings!

Hey fam and friends, 

Sorry for the late letter! This last week has been great. It's crazy 
how the weeks are flying by! One year ago I was more than
half way done with the MTC! 
 

Zone on p-day!

The weather out here can't seem to make up its mind. It's 70's one day, then 30's and snowing the next. My comp Elder Griffiths has had a cold for like 5 weeks, and thought it was just because the weather was changing, but we went to the doctor and found out he has a sinus infection. He's taking some amoxycillin, which I'm allergic to haha. 
 
Our ward (basically the whole Relief Society) is seriously obsessed with essential oils... More specifically Doterra oils, and sincerely believe these oils can heal ANY and all illness. "IF YOU ARE CONSISTENT..." they say. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it has some merit and science behind it, but the only results I've seen come from using it is that I end up smelling like the Relief Society. Sadly, as a result, I'm starting to be turned off more and more in my conversion to the religion of Doterra-ism that the Maryville ward has embraced. 
Sometimes seemingly more than Mormonism lol...

Doterra-ism? Yes it is a religion, the whole ward seems to have thrown
out all medication and replaced it with only the most ESSENTIAL
essential oils by Dottera©️... I feel like God gave us advancements in
medication for a reason, to bless us! WE DON'T GOTTA GO BACK 
TO THE STONE AGES Y'ALL?! I mean, can a man not get some 
Ibuprofen up here?! *Having a bad headache at dinner*, "Have you 
tried Doterra?! Rub some of this essential lemon juice/spikenard blend 
on your neck." I tried, and the pungent fumes caused my headache to get 
worse... *Members somehow hear we're having trouble sleeping* "Trust 
me Elders, rub this essential lavender sleep blend all around your eyes 
and on your eyelids and you'll sleep like a baby..." We tried, couldn't sleep
with wet eyes. *Griffiths has diabetes and a sinus infection*, "Have u
tried Doterra tho?! Rub a tiny bit of this essential relief blend and
a drop of peppermint around your face and pancreas, it'll heal your
infection and diabetes right up..." We stopped trying what they said
after Griffiths burned his eyeballs with that one. It's getting out of
hand the trust these people have for that company. Heck, *Compound
fracture break,  femur bone snapped in half*, "YA BUT HAVE U TRIED
DOTERRA THO?! A few drops of Doterra's gold, frankincense, and 
myrrh blend should fuse that bone back together.. Getcha back on your 
feet in a few days."

Is it possible that essential oils are not very essential...?
#SorryNotSorryDoterra-ites #GimmeSomeAdvil

Tanner's zone!

Mission life is really good these days tho. Honestly, being out in Maryville, so far away from everyone (the crowd of the city, and crowd of other missionaries), it's really low stress and relaxing haha. It helps that Griffiths and I are best pals. We can stay out of the drama and just get to work! We taught Taylor Kicksey the rest of The Plan of Salvation and she's loving it! She loves learning how to come closer to God! She's progressing and is super awesome.

Last p day we did a Zone party at this old folks home these members 
bought and turned into a hangout place with ping pong, scooters and bikes 
and all to ride around the halls in. Hahahahaha it was the weirdest 
feeling. This p day we again drove an hour and a half to be
with the rest of the missionaries. Our zone is sweeeet! Everything is
so far away when you're out in Maryville! You could fit like over half
of all of the wards in our mission, in the boundaries of our ward it's
so big! But driving is fun. We like visiting the Iowa and Nebraska
borders. :) We're actually closer to the mission home of the Des
Moines Iowa mission than we are to ours lol.

I love you fam, sorry not much to say this week!

Much luv,

- Tan

Tanner's comp, Elder Griffiths

Letter #53 . . . finding dumb ways to have fun!

Hey fam and friends! 

Thanks for the family update, and thanks for that package
mom, I loved it. Lots of people are complimenting on that red tie! 
We ate at a nice Chinese restaurant, so I guess you could say that's my 
hump day celebration. 

Sporting his new "hump day" tie!

  
There's been a huge warm streak going on here! We've been in the lower 70's randomly all week! I'm pumped for Missouri to start looking pretty again . . everything is yellow. It's flipping beautiful here when it's not yellow. I didn't realize how desert-y Utah is until I got here and saw SO MUCH GREEN!

Griffiths and I play basketball in the mornings every day. We've probably played a million games of "horse." Except we change the word we play with every time hahah. We both "own" like 20 different words. Recently we played "ouch" and "sore" because we could barely lift our arms to shoot because we were sore from working out. Missionaries have to find dumb ways to have fun OK, don't judge. 😂

All the lessons we have with our "teenage girl" investigators are in public, like at the college. That's the rule, just be in public with them haha. Taylor, our most progressing investigator has been sick last week.. so we will meet with her this week. We taught Jacinda at the college this week and is not really interested in progressing. We had an interesting conversation to say the least. Don't want to get into details, but let's just say she let us know she doesn't believe in just one God, and has the hots for the god Poseidon...? We walked around the campus a bit, and met two people that asked us a bunch of questions and want to meet in the future. Being on the campus made us realize we're not very excited for college. :)

Another "dumb" way to have fun! :)

I've been out one year, craziness. I thought I'd feel a lot cooler being out a year, but I don't. Haha I feel like the same old Tan. Am I supposed to have changed more at this point?! I guess I'm changing, but just don't realize it... My testimony of the Book of Mormon and my attitude toward being a part of this Gospel sticks out as something that's changed a lot out here. I know I say this every week, but I love that Book. It's more than a book . . it shows us how to be happy in this life, and shows us the Reason that's possible.


Much luv,

- Tan

PS. Trying to look cute with our middle parted hair 😂

Letter #52 . . . Hump Day Week!!

Fam bam!

Happy Birthday Spence! Hope you have a great day! You're getting bigger and bigger every time I see you, it's crazy. Yay momma, bout time you and paps got a little vacation together!! You should definitely get the most out of it and stay until Wednesday. :)

I'm sad I didn't get to see this date night! Park sent a little clip of it, looked like a fun Night! That's super awesome lots of friends showed up to it. I'll miss the next one too!? Britt was looking good in those dance pics! How's he liking the dances? I loved 'em.

So the 16 year old investigator I talked about last time who is super duper solid, is actually a different girl than our other 16 year old investigator haha. The one we've been meeting with recently is Taylor, who's super awesome. We had an amazing lesson with her on Wednesday. We went over the first part of the plan of Salvation and then talked about baptism. We read 2nd Nephi 31 and talked about baptism with her. She said she wants to be baptized but wants to be sure it's the right thing to do before she does. We invited her to seriously read the BOM with an open heart and pray to know if it's true. We showed her the Because Of Him video at the end, and she said she felt an overwhelming peace that she'd never felt, that suddenly made all of the things we were teaching her make sense. So Cool!! 

Tanner and Elder Griffiths

The other 16 year old one is Abby who I mentioned a few weeks ago that's the bishop's son's girlfriend. She's rarely in town so it's been tough to meet with her. We also are meeting with a girl named Cassie who's playing soccer at the college here, she's progressing pretty well!  We had dinner with her at the Bishop's house as well since she's a friend of their daughter. We showed that same Because of Him video, and her face lit up, and she said she was blown away. The spirit is working with her slowly! We're also working with another girl going to college here, named Jacinda. We've met with her a few times, but isn't really taking our commitment to read and pray about the Book of Mormon very seriously. She's just kinda curious about our religion. Hopefully she will read it! Haha so I guess everyone we're working with are girls around our age... That makes it fun haha. They're all solid, some more interested than others at the moment, but I could see them all joining the church eventually!

Well, I'm reading the Book of Mormon again, and I'm at Jacob 4! I love that book, and know that it's true!! Grandpa sent me a digital version of his book, learning to love the Book of Mormon, and I've been reading it a ton! Mostly all the extra articles he writes about the translation, plates, language of the book etc. Ive read most all of them. Man he is amazingly smart and spiritually in tune! Love him so much. 

Love you all, can't believe I've been out a Year! Time is flying. :) 

Tan  

PS I've been working out lots, and have gained almost 25 pounds, and am not as skinny, and appear less like I'm in a concentration camp. So that's a plus! :) 

Dressed in hump day stuff and . . .

Valentine's stuff!  You can see the extra pounds! :)