Blacker, Dekan

       I've been reading the New Testament recently and marking every time it mentions Christ or whenever he speaks, which is a lot. So all I want to say for my email this week is how much I love Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful for all that he's done for me and I have a feeling I don't even know the half of it. He's always there and he knows me perfectly. His arms are always open. His love is perfect. He is perfect. The more you let the Savior into your life, the better it becomes. I have a true testimony of my Savior Jesus Christ and his love for me, I've felt it and continue to feel it everyday as I turn to him. I also have a testimony of the love Christ has for others. I feel so privileged to be able to feel his love for those I'm teaching and then sharing his love with them. I know that Christ lives and walks with me for every step and stumble.  Rejoice! He is risen,  Elder Blacker

      Hey everybody, not much different has been happening this week. Elder Whetten is a stud, so that's fun and makes my job a lot easier. With not much being different though I just wanted to share one experience this week that I thought was pretty neat.        We knocked on someone's door, looking for a girl named Tammy. A big guy opened the door, which given how close to the Air Force Base we are probably means that he's military. Anyways, he opens the door and pretty clearly doesn't want to talk to us. Which was evidenced by the first 30 seconds of the conversation where he said only one word to us, no. He was just flat out refusing to talk to us. Then we told him that we'd been going around asking people one reason why they love Jesus Christ. Then he finally gave us an actual answer and said the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We then were talking about just what an act of love the atonement truly is. I then looked up at him, because I was too nervous...

       Ayo. This week has been pretty great. Training has been a lot more normal than I thought it would be.        I got a really great person to train. He's actually a lot like my friend Josh Ek. For any of you who don't know Josh just trust me that's a good thing, a really good thing. Everybody loves Josh and I already really love my companion Elder Whetten and it's so surprising to me how much he really is just like Josh. Elder Whetten is from Oregon and was unfortunately not called to Layton, Utah. He was originally called to Tahiti and what's even more sad is that his Visa has already been sent and could come any day now. He's already been told that he'll be staying for the entire transfer, but almost certainly he'll be gone after the transfer.         Elder Whetten is already a pretty good missionary though, he has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, he wants to work hard, and he wants to improve and grow. Those 3 th...

       I'll get to next transfer in a moment, but I first want to tell you guys about how this last transfer ended. Thankfully it ended on a good note, though it didn't always look like it would. The first half of the week, I basically moped around. I won't go into detail, but I wasn't trying my best, or really at all for that matter. Then on Friday my district leader called me and told us that we were really close to our goals, but it would take a few  days of hard work. Once I heard that, my attitude changed. I finally understand what losing yourself in the work looks like. My focus was no longer on my own problems, but rather how to best further the missionary work in this area. After that change in thinking, we got a lot of good work done and I wasn't consumed with my own problems.          On Sunday, we got a call from President and he asked if I was willing to train. Obviously, I was. I'm so excited to be training. I've wanted...

     This week was pretty nice. We were stuck inside for 4 days because my companion got sick, but I actually think it was for the better. I was actually able to get productive missionary work done over the phone and it allowed for my relationship with Elder Fairbanks to mend. Unfortunately, I still can't trust him. I gave him a little bit of trust and he immediately broke it. So that's annoying, but we're getting along and it's only 1 more week. I just need a change of scenery. I'd like to move areas, I think it would benefit the area, but I'm fine to stay as long as something changes.         I've grown so much this transfer and it seems like it happened all at once. For the first 3-4 weeks it felt like we were very stagnant. The area was stagnant, our growth as missionaries was stagnant, it felt like we went out and worked all day and yet it also felt like no real work was actually getting done, even though there's a lot of work to do in this a...