Road Trip

Chuck & Snick

We took a road trip to Northern Nevada on September 18-26, 2015. We stayed with Chuck's sister in Carson City for several days and then hooked up with Deb & Randy for the last 4 days.

"Ghost Rider" Rhyolite, NV

Convict Lake, CA

Sorry, but the pic of all the little Asian women in a row taking pictures was too funny!

Mono Lake, CA

Walker Burger... YUM!

Add caption

Farmer's Market in Carson City

Hiking w/ Brad & Liz

JAX at the Tracks in Truckee, CA
Featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives

A couple of bucks in Liz's front yard!

Governor's Mansion - Carson City

Nevada Capitol Building

Another hike with a waterfall...

Squirrely! Enough said.

Virginia City, NV

Mine tour in Virginia City

Lake Tahoe

Emerald Bay - South Lake Tahoe, CA

Vikingsholm: 38-room mansion on the shore of Emerald Bay
It's a steep 1-mile hike down to the mansion, and an even steeper hike (I swear!) back up to the top!!  Deb & I thought we were going to die.

Craving a little Mexican Food!

Back to Virginia City with Deb & Randy
Howdy Sheriff!!

Hundreds of Harleys in Virginia City for the weekend!

Crusty ol' coots!

Catholic Church in Virginia City

Classroom inside the old school in Virginia City

Sister Alex Solomon

Well nothing too crazy happened this week. Actually, maybe a little bit of crazy was present. For starters, we got 2 more investigators on date! Yep! On Tuesday we had a lesson with them and they agreed to be baptized on October 24th. How awesome is that?! So we have a baptism on the 17th and then 2 on the 24th. I am pretty stoked. The first guy I can't take credit for at all because he has been taught by so many different sets of missionaries but I have been here since the beginning for the other two so I feel like I am finally getting some work done.

The other two are named Chloe and Colleen. Chloe is 14 and lives with her grandma and grandpa (Colleen and her member husband). They are a lot of fun but they've never really had a lot of family time before so they said they like getting all together to have us over. This week Colleen said, "I don't know why I'm so attracted to what you girls are saying. It just makes sense."  So another plus was the women's session of general conference. We invited Chloe and Colleen and they showed up for the broadcast at the church! I'm not entirely sure that they were really into the broadcast or anything but I think they liked President Uchtdorf and his talk. We wanted to start a tradition for them so we took them out for ice cream afterward. We took them to Coldstone and they had never been there before!!!! That's insane because it's so good! So anyway, while we were there, hey started asking us about missionary life and how we got to Arizona and everything. Chloe was really interested and said, "I think I might like to do that someday". She had also never heard of BYU so we told her all about it and she says she wants to look into it. Overall, it was an awesome night.

Things still aren't good with our Ward mission leader. He is really condescending and treats us like we are babies who can't handle anything. It makes me so mad!! Whatever. I have been praying and fasting about it so I hope things get better.

Did you guys get to see the lunar eclipse last night? It was so cool! I'll send you an awesome picture of it from my view here. We went out walking last night because so many people were on the streets looking at the moon. We tried to say hi to everyone but by the time we got to the end of one street p, everybody had gone inside! Funnily enough, there were two families still out on the street and they were members of our Ward who we had never met so it turned out to be good because we got to meet and talk to them.

Other pictures....we are rearranging our apartment this morning because someone is giving us a recliner. When we moved the couch, we saw the bottom of the filing cabinet! So cool! And when we moved the filing cabinet, we saw the wall! So gross! Elders used to live in this apartment before us so I don't even want to know what is on the wall. You guess to yourselves. I will just send you a picture.

Anyway, have a good week! Smack Connor around for me since he hasn't written me back yet. It has been like two weeks! That stinker face.

LOVES

God is Good

Dearest people that didnt leave their umbrella on the bus this week,

First of all.. yeah.. I left my umbrella on the bus. And because I have the best luck of ever, it rained pretty much every day.. And now some lucky Argentino is enjoying an umbrella made in the greatest country ever (well, sold in the greatest country ever, China still makes everything right?)

But yeah everything here is tranqui. Other than that, my spanish is coming along really good. nothing else really happened haha. Probably because I was angry about my leaving my umbrella on the bus. The best thing that happened is that Juan is progressing A FUL! He is still set to be baptized this sunday :)

Love you all! Stay awesome, and dont leave your umbrella on the bus.

Elder Evans

Massage train with the family that has 14 kids and 2 more on the way. :)

Grand Bourg :)

Dearest people that dont know the beautifulness of Alfajor's,

Howdy! Not a bad week.. Not gonna lie nothing really happened haha.

But yeah Juan is doing really good! He is really seeing the blessings of the Gospel in his life and in his family. He told us the other day that he cried because of how happy he was! Also, his baptism date is the 4th of October, which is during General Conference! And here, all of the people go to the Stake Center to watch conference.. so.... He gets to be listen to the words of the Prophets and then get baptized inbetween sessions! PUMPED.

So happy to be here. So happy to learn spanish. So happy to help others come unto Christ.

Love you all!

Elder Evans

Sister Solomon

It rained today!

Hangin in our beds writing our families!

THINGS ARE HAPPENING

Sister Alex Solomon - Arizona, Phoenix Mission

Hellooooooo! This week has been pretty great. There were definitely some negative times but I will get to those later....to start though, we have been working on bringing baptism up in every lesson with our investigators. It has gone well so far! On Monday I asked 3 people to be baptized and they all said yes! They asked when we usually have baptisms and we said Saturdays so they started trying to plan it for this Saturday! We were like, "hold up and simmer down now, you still drink and smoke and we've only had like 2 lessons! You're not ready yet!" It was still awesome though. So we are going to try to put them

on date this week. In other good news, we got another investigator on date for baptism! His name is Chris and he has been investigating the church for almost 2 years! His baptism is October 17th. It's exciting because he has been taught by a bajillion sets of sister missionaries so a bunch of them are coming to the baptism with us. I'm super excited!!

This week was also mission tour....that's when a couple of general authorities come speak to our mission and give us training. So on Thursday, we heard from Elder Bradley Foster and Elder and Sister Montoya who are super new because this is his first year as a general authority. They are from Mexico so Sister Montoya spoke to us entirely in Spanish while her husband tried to translate. It was pretty cute. I have to toot my own horn now for a little bit....so a few weeks ago, I had this idea. I asked my companion if we could go through the ward lists and make birthday cards for everyone who had a birthday this month. We have been doing that every day and dropping them off at their houses every night. I just thought it would be a great way to show the wards that we care about them so then maybe they will like us and trust us. Anyway, at mission tour, Elder Montoya was talking about how we get in with people in our ward councils. He wrote down words like "bishop" and "ward mission leader" and then wrote words next to them like "birthday" and "wedding" . He said, these are the important events in people's lives. They care about them so if you start to care about them too, you can make a difference to them. So no big deal, but a general authority and I totally had the same idea. Everyone in our district and zone knew we had been doing the card thing so they all turned and looked at me down the row and my companion gave me a high five. It was awesome! Why am I so cool? Haha, just jokes, but it was fun.

I gave my talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. Thanks mom, for allowing me to  share your experiences. That was the most time and effort I have EVER put in to a talk and I think I turned out pretty good. A lot of people thanked me afterward so I felt nice. Also mom, the primary president texted us yesterday and thanked me for my talk and for your story. She said her lesson was on the Holy Ghost that day so she used examples from my talk and your story and that it went over really well. Thanks for all your help!

Saturday was cool because our stake had a preparedness fair. There were a bunch of booths there that taught you how to do gardening, survival skills, solar cooking, food storage, and family history, and a lot more. They also had an emergency helicopter land in the parking lot that people could go inside. It was awesome! We went to help and we ended up working the family history booth. There were a lot of members and nonmembers there so we got to teach a lot of people about familysearch.org. The guy who set up the booth had a giant old book on the table that was called "Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah" and it had pictures and bios of men who came to Utah in the mid 1800s. It was published in 1910.  Anyway, I found some ancestors in it!  A ward member posted and tagged me on fb on the ward page pointing to a picture of Ira Stearns Hatch.  He said, "Sister Solomon found ancestors in my book...can you see the family resemblance?" Hahahaha, it was awesome! I will send you the pictures.

We are having fun but we also have a huge problem this week. That problem's name is Brother Anderson. He is our ward mission leader for the Arrowhead Ranch ward. To give you some background, ever since I got here, the dude has been giving me weird vibes. He just looks creepy and he always talks in this weird soft voice. I hate it. Anyway, yesterday he sat us down and told us we were not good missionaries. He wants us to stop teaching this investigator named Marge. He told us that she "is not comfortable with this particular set of missionaries" and that the teaching should be left up to him. He came right out and said, "maybe when you get transferred, I will tell her that our ward has good missionaries now." I wanted to straight up punch him in the face. So that happened and I am upset but I also just want to laugh at him and say, "oh, you think we aren't good missionaries? That's funny because we found 12 new investigators this month in our other ward AND we will have 4 baptisms next month."

Anyway, other than that it was a good week.

LOVES

I heard scraping sounds when I was in the bathroom then looked down and saw this....Sister Williams is super creepy and I love it!

Que Capo!

Dearest people that dont use pesos,

How goes it? :) Things are going good here in Grand Bourg, Buenos Aires, Argentina! Had my first week with my new companion Elder Santos de Brazil. Que Capo! or in english.. WHAT A STUD. He teaches incredibly powerful and really loves the people here. We have been getting along great and Im going to learn so much from him!

As far as this week. We found 12 new investigators so thats awesome! We have a ton of confidence in one that is about 20 years old. We contacted him in the street and hes really excited to learn about the gospel! Also, we have another investigator que va a bautizarse si o si the fourth of October! He couldnt be baptized before because he wasnt married.. but God is freaking awesome and HE HAS A MARRIAGE DATE. He is going to get married the second and then baptized the fourth. So excited to see him progress. The Gospel really has helped him and his family so much. I think hes more excited than I am :)

This weekend also was a little interesting. Here in Argentina, the people absolutely love soccer. Duh, they live in South America. But this weekend was special for the soccer fans of Argentina because of what the people call here "El Superclassico" This is when the two best teams in Buenos Aires, Boca and River, play. Ha! Talk about sketchy! The missionaries that work in capital, they have to report back to their houses at about 6:00 because of how crazy and dangerous it is. Every time a team scored a goal, Im not sure what it was, fireworks or gunshots, would start going off! Every time we heard these sounds Elder Santos and I were like "yup.. someone scored". But yeah in the end BOCA WON. Boca is the team that I go for here.. well thats what I tell the people anyway because I know nothing about soccer and I cant play because Im incredibly gringo. Pretty much the only reason I like Boca is because their colors are blue and yellow.. so yeah.. BOCA!!!!!

Love you all! 

Elder Evans

P.S. Its my Boca beanie only for the picture. I swear I dont wear it while prothselyting. (Yeah I know I spelled it wrong, I cant live without autocorrect). Love yall!

2 MONTHS DOWN

Sister Alex Solomon:

Heeeeeeey there! I have lots of things to talk about and I have been procrastinating writing this for too long now.

So for starters, last week was transfer week. I didn't get transferred because I'm still in training but one of he sisters we lived with did! She's up in Sedona right now and I'm really jealous! But also not too jealous because I like it here now and I know the people. I'm also hoping that I stay here for the winter and that I get transferred up north next summer. That would be awesome! I hope I didn't just jinx it. Anyway, so that sister left so we got a new sister in our apartment. HOWEVER, sister Wood (who just got the new companion) also found out from the mission president that she is gong to be emergency transferred this next week. She and her companion will be leaving us and will be in a trio in Peoria. It's because one of the sisters that was in the MTC with me is getting sent home this week....yikes! So her companion needs companions! So because of all this mess, my companion and I will have the apartment to ourselves pretty much indefinitely because Sister Woods ward is getting taken over by other missionaries. Sooooooo that's weird! The elders are supposed to get her ward but she has specifically asked President Griffin to give her ward TO ME AND MY COMPANION. That's right. She doesn't trust the elders with her ward so she has requested that I receive a THIRD WARD to look after.  I can't deal with this. I guess we'll wait and see what happens.

On the bright side, we now have 12 investigators! I'm so happy with that! We met this one lady on the street who has crazy tattoo sleeves and facial piercings but she is so down to earth and wanted to cook us dinner and for us to teach her and her humans and their two kids. We did that last night and it went really well! They are the coolest family! Plus, she recently lost over 100 pounds (she was 320 last year) so she eats really healthy food and dinner was great.

So I also got to invite someone to be baptized this week! I was really nervous but she had been coming to church now for over 8 months already. She knew a lot about Joseph smith already but we taught her the Restoration and then I randomly just wanted to show her a video. So I showed her the Mormon message that is Jeffrey R. Holland's testimony of the Book of Mormon. She thought it was great! I asked her if she would be baptized and she said, "Probably but I'm not sure". I really wanted her to come hear my talk on the blessings of church membership next Sunday but she's going to visit her daughter in Minnesota! It will be the one week she has missed church in months! Sad day.

Fun facts for this week: I cut my companion's hair! I can't believe she trusted me to do it but it turned out fine and I had fun so that was cool.

My roommates think I'm weird because I drink my chamomile tea with coffee creamer every night before bed. The first time I did it, one of them practically had a fit! It helps me sleep, and I NEED sleep! We finally had our first "monsoon" of the season last night. It rained for hours and it was hard rain...I loved it so much! My companion and I sat out on our balcony with our tea and journals and watched the Lightning and rain. 

There is an old man who wants to take us to lunch this week but the only place he will go is this nasty seafood buffet. My companion said I have to eat or he will get offended but I am NOT eating there. I will send you a screenshot of the reviews so you can understand.

I have more to say but my roommates are rushing me because they want to go shopping right now. Ugh. Oh well, I will email more later! Have a great week!

LOVES