3 Weeks of great stories and pictures from Elder Zesiger

I've gotten so behind in posting Elder Zesiger's letters! But I think a new baby is a good excuse!

Letters to Mom...

April 23rd

I'm super glad that I got your packages today, it was perfect timing.  Yesterday this was my food:

- Ramen

- an egg

- a bag of popcorn

- a week old half chocolate pancake i found in the fridge

I almost died, so I was glad to find reinforcements today in the office! hahaha

I love you so much mom, you should try fasting for something awesome to happen and watch, I never really had a testimony of fasting either until recently, but now I do.  (I told him that I struggle with my testimony of fasting :))

April 16th (Easter Sunday)

I gained a testimony of fasting earlier in the week.  One sister investigator is doing amazing and reads like 20 chapters of the Book of Mormon everyday, but her husband  was kind of a problem before cuz he just didn't want to get married or for any change at all to happen in their lives.  So, last fast Sunday, she fasted with us that he would have his heart softened and that he would see the light in our message.  He then immediately went to conference and I think I emailed you that last week, but this week, the change was even bigger.  He now lives the word of wisdom, reads the Book of Mormon everyday, and also wants to get married.  The only thing that he is still having a hard time with is church because of his work, but I'm sure that will change soon too.  It was the first miracle I can remember ever seeing from fasting, I emailed dad about one that we tried again, I don't know what will happen yet, but I trust that Heavenly Father will do what's best.

I am going to Palawan tomorrow, so my life is pretty far from boring haha.  I love you mom, I'm grateful for you, Have a great week!

Elder Zesiger

April 9th 

( I asked him what he would like in a package.....) Shaving cream and deodorant would be nice to have. and sour candy like kazoozles and sour brite eggs.  We did have a baptism on Saturday, how did you know?  thanks for the pictures haha they are always awesome to see!  Calvin and I have different problems haha no matter how much I work out I cant get bigger! haha and now I only work out like maybe once a week since we are always doing stuff in the mornings.

Last night, our car battery failed, so I learned how to get a battery out and now it is charging at a shop.  At conference, Elder Billarina and I were about falling a sleep and missionaries kept noticing, they didn't have a car to worry about all night haha.  

I'll send you some pictures from this birthday party we went to.  We are teaching this young mom named Danica who will be baptized in a couple of week and we went to her daughters birthday party last night.  I got to see all my boni 6 friends at conference.  Jonas was there and his mission papers are in the area office so he'll know pretty soon!

Well I'm still kind of tired, so I can't think of much, but I love you.  You are the best mom ever.  Oh here you go, one funny tradition/ superstition here is that nanays who just gave birth cannot go in air conditioning for at least 2 weeks after or they will get deathly ill.  You need to do a ritual shower with a banana leaf everyday for a couple weeks so that you can be healthy.  Just to let you know haha.

Elder Zesiger

Letters to Dad....

April 23rd

 Hey dad, I'm doing good, this week was awesome!  We spent Tuesday to Friday in Palawan and it was awesome!  Sister (investigator) is doing good, she came to church again this week with all three of her kids and payed fast offerings again just because she wanted to haha.  She is reading the Book of Mormon like crazy and is already in the middle of 2 Nephi after about a week.

The coolest miracle of this week happened Saturday night- Sunday.  Saturday night we oymed this guy names "D" and invited him to church, but we didn't really think that anything would happen.  The next morning, we found him by himself in the church about 30 mins early sitting on the couch waiting for us!  He didn't know how to get there, but he said he would and he wanted to be honest, so he asked around where the Mormons were and he made it!  I sat by him throughout the meeting and got to know him.  He is 18 and has 6 brothers and sisters.  When he was little, his dad was put in prison and his mom cheated on him and got pregnant with another guy.  His parents are together and both at home now, but they do drugs together.  He lives in this tiny 2 ft by 3 ft wood house.  Because of that, the kids were affected too.  The oldest is 23 and a bakla, the next oldest got pregnant when she was pretty young too.  D is the 3rd and he is a lot different.   

After church at about 6pm we went to his house and taught him for the first time.  We had given him a pamphlet and a Book of Mormon at church before he went home.  As we started the lesson, we asked him how he was and he said that he had finished the whole pamphlet and a couple chapters of the Book of Mormon too.  It was a great lesson and at the end, he accepted a baptismal date.  As we were about to leave, he asked if he could come with us, we said "ok".  So he came and worked with us until the end of the day!  He said that he really wants to go on a mission now!  He is awesome!

Haha all these pictures are funny.  I love you guys.  You are the best family. I'll send you some more pictures.  Did you know a guy is high school named Mark Johnson?  His son is in the mission.

April 16th 

 I just read your promise with the $1000 dollars ( Jeff tried to bribe Caden to play football) to everyone here in the office and they laughed.  All the "important" things at home don't seem that important haha.  When i was at home, those things felt like the most important things in the world, but it's crazy when you meet people here that have really broken lives and real problems.  Do you know what I mean?  I don't know... haha

Tomorrow we fly to Palawan, we'll be there for 4 days to teach at a couple zone conferences and to do some cool stuff too called the butterfly garden and the crocodile farm!  Lately I've been getting like public speaker training.  It's kinda cool.  Over 2 weeks I've spoken in 5 congregations including zone conferences and church and all together it's like 350 people!  It's been super fun and I feel like I'm getting better at it with the practice.

Do you remember the story I told you of when we were fasting and then we taught that family and they fed us?  Well there's a lot more to the story now.  The husband decided that he didn't want to listen to us after like the 2nd lesson so we've just been teaching the wife, with her 3 little kids.  She says that she knows our message to be true and loves the Book of Mormon.  We were teaching her the plan of salvation a couple days ago and got to the part where we told her that she needs to endure to the end.  Then she asked us a question that was probably one of the hardest questions I've ever been asked in my life.  She told us about some troubles she is having and I made her a promise that if she would fast, come to church, and pay her fast offerings, then a miracle would happen and everything would be ok.  We had to teach her what fasting was because she is brand new, she had also never been to church before, but we fasted with her. 

She fasted and came to church yesterday with all 3 of her little kids, ages 7, 4, and 2.  I have been praying like crazy that Heavenly Father will recognize my promise and bless her with a miracle, because she kept her side of the bargain.  We will go and visit her later tonight, but i don't know what will happen.

Just so you know, I've known that release date (October 18th) for like a year now, I just didn't want you to start a count down haha.  What is your great news about the trans am?  I love you dad

Elder Zesiger 

April 9th 

Haha that's awesome!  I forgot that you broke your leg on your mission haha.  This week was awesome again.  General conference was at my old chapel back when I was in Boni 6.  This kid came up to me and said "Hi Elder Zesiger!"  It took me a little bit to remember him, cuz he looked kind of different.  But it was Jaybert, a kid that I had taught and ended up getting baptized 2 weeks after I got transferred to Santa Mesa!  He is super active and has a lot of friends at church haha it was cool.

One of our investigators named G is doing awesome and is reading like 20 chapters of the Book of Mormon every night!  She went to all 10 hours of conference and is ready to be baptized except her husband J is a little slower and had never come to church.  They aren't married yet so they have to be before either of them get baptized.  We were praying so hard that J would be able to go to conference, but we weren't sure because it was far and he had work, but he ended up coming anyway!  Then that Elder Costa ended up giving his talk and it seemed like he was talking directly to J!  It was awesome.  I really think that he is going to start progressing a lot more now and then they can both be baptized.

Kate looks awesome!  I heard from Caden that you haven't started working on the trans am yet.  If you were an investigator I would have dropped you by now haha.  I know that many blessings will come into your life from keeping commitments and working on the trans am.  hahaha.  I love you dad, i'll send more miracles to the others.

Elder Zesiger

Letter to Caden...

Hey Caden, here summer vacation just started for all of the kids.  Here is a funny story.  This week we found an arabian guy, so we went into his tiny house to teach him.  It was big enough for his bed and our legs to hang off the bed and nothing else.  He shut the door and we were trapped.  We soon realized that he was super drunk and we were stuck in there for a little bit as he told us about his birds, the circus, old testiment prophets, his chicks, and his favorite movies.  After about 30 minutes, we finally escaped.  His name was Elijah haha.

Well, on Saturday I watched How to Train Your Dragon 2, it is amazing!  I also noticed something weird about myself, I can't watch movies any more without finding like weird gospel message woven into the story line.  Listen to this Caden and learn of me.  Drago Bludvist is introduced to us in a grand council.  He presents a plan to save them all, if they will bow down and worship him, they refuse and there is a war.  His plan later in the movie is to take away agency of others to accomplish his will.  Hiccup on the other hand does not seek power, but to tear it down.  Sound familiar?  hahahaha

I'll send you pictures on me in Palawan next week to prove I still exist haha.

Finally, I got humble and prayed to Heavenly Father.

Letter to Mom...

haha I love you so much mom.  Kate looks awesome!  You are the best.  I had another awesome week this week.  I sent the coolest miracle to Dad, but I have a cool one for you too.  I was at MLC which is like the leadership council with all of the zone leaders and sister training leaders and I had to teach them.  Since we are really busy all the time, I hadn't prepared anything, but I had to teach them about how to use family home evening as a missionary tool.  I just stood up and started going and it ended up being the best lesson in front of a group that I think I've ever taught!  It was cool it was like Heavenly Father knew that they had to learn these things to help the mission so He just helped me out.

We are seeing a lot of miracles in our area.  It is kind of like Santa Mesa was, no one has been baptized here in like a year but we have one coming up this Saturday!  and the next couple weeks hopefully!  I love being here.  

Dad sent me this cool thing about my name which pretty much says that I can be lazy or awesome and I am super grateful to you that you got me out here on a mission.  you were the one who packed me and did all the papers and helped me with the ticket desk, all I did was reluctantly leave haha.  I am so grateful to have you as a mom.  I'm excited to see you and Kate and everyone on mother's Day, but also not excited haha.  I'll email more stories to others, I love you mom.

Elder Zesiger

Letter to Dad...

Haha that's awesome!  Thanks for the story and the name thing!  Kate looks awesome and it's cool that you used Alta (her middle name).  I am super glad that mom made me go on a mission before college or other stuff cuz I would've blown it haha.  I often think of what my life would be like right now if I didn't go on a mission and I don't think that it would be very good.  I'm super happy that I came here, I love these people.

I've got a lot of cool stories again for this week.  Heavenly Father taught me one of the best lessons ever last night.  Lately we've been kind of successful finding people and stuff and I think that we have not been relying on Him as much as we should.  We were fasting yesterday and excited for an awesome day with lots of appointments as usual, but every appointment fell through.  For 7 appointments and like 4 hours, we just got rejected and rejected.  It's called getting punted.  It happens to most people a lot, but this was one of my first times so it was hard.  By the time 7 pm rolled around, it was almost time to go home to do reports and I felt like a complete failure.  We were supposed to be the best examples I thought, this doesn't happen to us!  Finally I got humble and prayed to Heavenly Father.  I told Him that we were doing our best, but weren't good enough to do this work.  I told Him that we had done all we could do and that we needed His help.  Just then, a thought came into my head that we needed to go back to this guy that we had oymed on the street on Friday night.  He seemed ok,, but nothing special, but we had no other ideas, so we went.

When we got there, he let us into his house and we taught his wife and kids.  It was amazing and they were really interested and are excited for us to come back.  And then, just to prove that Heavenly Father was looking out for us, as we were about to leave, they offered us dinner.  We had just met them haha but they fed us an amazing meal of fried talapia and rice, they were a really poor family.  I left that house super grateful to my Heavenly Father.

Later that night, when I was following up the zone leaders, some of them were discouraged and I was able to share that story with them and the spirit was super strong in those calls too!  I love being a missionary haha, especially when it gets hard.

Haha I love you guys, I'm excited to see Kate, but also not excited cuz that'll mean that I've only got 5 months left...

Have a great day

Elder Zesiger

Letter to Shelby...

I had lots of cool experiences this week kaibigan.  On Wednesday night, Elder Fawson and Elder Cortez flew over from Palawan to stay with us before mlc.  Elder Fawson worked with me and I thought that I had the day totally figured out.  I had an awesome plan with lots of good people, but Heavenly Father had a better one.  My plan totally failed,and no one was home.  I just asked Elder Fawson who he knew because 14 months ago he was in this area.  He brought us to this investigator who was almost baptized 14 months ago, but she moved to the province right before, so she never was.  

We were able to teach her and during the lesson, we asked her why she thought God would sent Elder Fawson back at this time.  She said that it was because she should continue where she left off and be baptized!  It was awesome haha.