Dear,                                  8/22/16

We had an AMAZING WEEK OF MIRACLES THIS WEEK! Tuesday, I was in Mesa with the Zone Leaders there, and we found this one lady who is really looking for God, and who loved the message of the restoration. She was pretty Golden. One of the Zone Leaders really remind me of Daniel. His Name is Elder ...C . THAT IS CRAZY! Anyways, he is from Brazil and his Grandpa was a Seventy and his family is really in the church... But before his mission he was really into the Drug life and Girl life back home... BUT After a lengthy process of repentance, and due to MUCH Prayer and Fasting from the family, Elder c overcame all things and is now serving a mission as a very influential leader among missionaries. But he didn't just start his mission that way... Elder c and I actually came to the mission on the same airplane, but he had a rough start with some obedience and diligence issues, but a couple months back, I was on an exchange with the Zone Leaders up in Snowflake, and we had a Zone Training Meeting, where all the missionaries from the surrounding areas came together. This was at a time when many of the missions influential leaders were going home, and we needed good leadership. I took Elder c aside and was rather bold and brutal with him. I told him how much better he was than what he was doing and how he was acting. And how God needed him as a leader... Today. We both felt the spirit and God's love, and from that point forth he has been a mighty leader in our mission. Doing MUCH good. In Wednesday, I was in Paradise Valley with a good Elder from Montana! We had so many miracles where the appointment we were going to wouldn't answer their door for the lesson we had, so we would go to the house right beside that house, and we would talk to them, and they were almost all interested about hearing more of the restored gospel. It was neat! Thursday, I was with the Zone Leaders in Fountain Hills! That was great as well. There is a cute little Yavapi Indian Reservation out there that we found a man's secret house hiding in the Saguaro Cactus Forest. He was interested in hearing more as well. Lots and lots of miracles! Right now I am in Show Low getting ready to head to Snowflake for another couple of exchanges and to correct some disobedience up there... Oye. Good stuff! Have a great week! I love you!

Elder Flake

Hey Family,                                         8/15/16

I am alive... Sort of... We picked up a missionary from El Salvador
this week, and he was pretty sick... And then a Haboob(crazy Arizona
Dust storm. Look it up online) struck, and made me super sick. But
life is good and God is good. I love y'all.

Elder Flake

What a week of MIRACLES! We had so many incredible experiences and met
so many incredible people. We have a new investigator named Sh, and
she is amazing! As of late, we have really been focusing on helping
each of the members feel capable of actually doing the award Mission
Plan, and Sh is a direct fruit of that! The Scottsdale YSA Ward
Mission Plan is broken up into 3 Levels: Daily, Monthly, and
Quarterly. Daily the goal is to pray for missionary opportunities and
have a gospel conversation bearing your testimony. Monthly you are to
invite someone to an activity, go to threat activity, and then follow
up. Quarterly we ask that they share a book of Mormon and invite a
friend to meet with the missionaries. She came with one of her
coworkers that invited her, and she loved it! It is working! And
imagine if everyone in the Ward did that! There would be dozens of
baptisms every month! So that was cool. I was also very impressed by
the new missionary from El Salvador, Elder Vs. This is what he
said to Elder Wt, his companion: "- "Elder, if you want to run,
I'll run with you. But if you don't want to run, I'll make you run."
That is the attitude we've got to have! He is such a great disciple of
Jesus Christ and a wonderful example to me. We've all been pretty
sick, but "The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand
can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may
combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God
will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated
every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded
in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the
Great Jehovah shall say the work is done." That prophecy is being
fulfilled! NOTHING CAN STOP IT! And I am a witness of that truth. I
was recently reflecting on something that a fellow missionary said to
me a while back about how after he returned home he would "probably
just go less active." Honestly, it was sort of haunting me. I thought
about how many returned missionaries I know that didn't feel it or
didn't make there missions what it could have been, and are not not
active in the church. Just going on a mission doesn't automatically
and permanently convert you. It has the potential to, but nothing is
for sure until we are SAFELY DEAD! If only all the wonderful Elders
and Sisters could just feel it! This reflection created a bonfire in
my heart, a burning passion to help others to have powerful moving
experiences through, faith, obedience, and terribly hard work! God
lives! I am so grateful to be His servant. Have a great week my
friends.

Dearest family!                                                  8/8/16

This week was a truly wonderful week with miracle upon miracle! We got
to the point where when one of our appointments canceled we would just
look up and say: "alright Father, you canceled our appointment
again... What miracles do you have in mind for us now?" And every
single days so far, we have been answered with miracles and powerful
spiritual experiences. My favorite one was right after we had a
special experience at the visitor's center in Mesa... We had arranged
for a returning less active, named Bn, to come teach a lesson with
us. And it was a really important experience for Bn, because this
is basically the first experience with missionary work in his life, he
needed to be strengthened, and we needed to build his trust...... And
the appointment we had scheduled for him to come with us canceled on
our way over... Soooo, as usual, we took it as an opportunity to let
the Lord make our plans! And he did!!! There was a man that we had
recently met, but we hadn't been able to get ahold of him for a while!
Well, we felt like we should try him out, so that is what we did. It
was already around 8:00 pm, and the bad part was that moments before
we deleted his address on our phone... So we didn't know exactly where
he lived. But I have a pretty good memory, and I thought I could find
it by memory, but I couldn't. We spent about thirty minutes driving
around with Bn following us around the whole time... It was
embarrassing, but it turns out that God was messing with my memory on
purpose, because at the end, when we were about to give up, we had
this thought to just give him a call, which, is sometimes risky
because it is easier for them to tell you to not come over and teach
them when you are not standing in front of them! But we called once...
Nothing, and then a few minutes later as we were defeated and sadly
driving home, He called us back! And said that he was on his way home
and that he would love it if we'd stop by! We went and had an amazing
experience with him, where the returning less-active just bore his
soul to him. The spirit was so strong! Tears were shed and afterwards
Bn said that he saw himself in the investigator we just had a
lesson with. He came to church this Sunday, because Bn picked him
up! They are good friends now! And he will be baptized soon! It was so
great! And that is just one of the experiences that happened this
week. On a mission, you have one mind, one heart, and one soul for the
Lord. For an entire Two years. And the Lord uses us in His work. And
he works by miracles. Thus, God uses us as miracles in the lives of
others! He lives! Lots of other miracles and amazing things
happening... I'll send you another journal when you are done with the
one I sent you! Love you! Have a great week!


Elder Flake

Dearest family,                                                           8/2/16

This week was Phenomenal! I have been particularly impressed by the
power of Members of the church to do missionary work. Elder H
and I cover to wards over here in good ole' Scottsdale Arizona. One is
the Scottsdale YSA Ward that covers all of Scottsdale and More. We
have everyone from from high school dropouts to famous actresses and
NFL Football players in this Ward. Most are return missionaries. The
other Ward is The Chaparral Ward. Chaparral is made up of older, but
extremely wealthy families. Now let me inform you about Missionary
work in Scottsdale, especially North Scottsdale. Missionary work in
most places of the world include the cliché missionary word se llama
tracting. Tracting is when missionaries go and knock doors and contact
people about their interest in the restored gospel... However, in
North Scottsdale, many places have city laws that make it ILLEGAL to
tract! One of the only places in the world where it is actually
against the law to knock on people's doors. The places where it is
legal to tract usually have just ridiculous impenetrable gates with
guard houses and all this fancy technology and everything short of a
fire breathing dragon to keep people from EXACTLY WHAT WE ARE TRYING
TO DO. Which, is to knock on their door and talk to them and to share
why we are so happy and how they could possibly be happy if they would
just give it a chance. NeedLess to say, but we do not knock a lot of
doors here. And you might originally think that not being able to do
that would lead to less success, BUT WE ARE having a lot of success!
Because success in missionary work is by working through MEMBERS. The
majority of success in our mission and in any mission around the world
comes from members. President Hinckley said that missionary work is
useless unless the members fellowship and retain the converts that
missionaries baptize! Anyway, we have been working A TUN through
members and we are having lots of success. There is an 18 year old in
the Chaparral Ward that just graduated high school, and he reminds me
A LOT of Daniel. He has this girlfriend, who reminds me a lot of
a friend of Daniels. And he invited her to church a few times, and she came. And
then she went to Alaska. And she saw the missionaries there and ran
after them and demanded them to take her to church! And now she really
wants to be baptized... But her mother is a super famous person. And
not very religious so she is causing us some difficulties. Your
prayers would be welcome. I love you. I apologize for the short little
emails. I do love and pray for you each individually.

Elder Flake

Hello Family!                                            7/27/16

Alrighty, so much to say in such little time! I'll talk fast, so pay attention! So, as I was saying the Indian Reservations that I visited on exchanges for a couple of days were awesome! It was so fun! Just reading a whole bunch of laminates! And they really do accept the gospel quickly! Most of them already know the prominent stories in the Book of Mormon because their parents and grandparents had been telling them and passing them down for thousands of years! The Book of Mormon is true. And it can bring peace to your mind and healing to you heart better and quicker than any other book I know! And it has so many wonderful, exciting, and adventurous stories! This book will keep up you on your toes! Read it! On the reservation, we ate at this very kind Native American sisters house! The traditions are very much alive up there! They still mostly cook of fires! They fed us Ash bread, which is basically bread that is cooked over ashes... It is really good, and then she cooked us some steak over that same fire on a net looking thingy.... Oh, and the horses roam free, so we had lots of horses coming up and helping us cook! The Indian woman that cooked for us went by the name of F. She is a woman of great faith. Her husband was an outlaw, her four kids were all under the age of seven, she lived in one of the most dangerous places in the country, AND she was cooking for 9 missionaries the best food that she could possibly come up with... Oh, and it was her birthday. She started getting involved in the church about a year ago, and she claims that her life has changed. She has a quiet confidence about her and her fire of faith is seen in her experienced eyes! What an example of faith! I was thinking about her and how compassionate our Heavenly Father is towards her and those in hard situations. Those who bear their afflictions quietly without complaint and without giving up. Those who are used and abused are remembered by our God, and how much more compassion has he in them then on those who suffer the same and complain and self pity themselves! God sees all. Under His watch, NOTHING will go unnoticed, but EVERYTHING will be made right. ISN'T THAT SO COOL!?! His plan is PERFECT!

We had a lot of transfer planning, where we pray a lot and think a lot about who needs to go to what area and who should be leaders and what areas we should  close and who needs help and how are we going to get everything right and more. This was one of the most hectic transfers ever! We had 25 missionaries leaving. Almost 20 new ones coming in, and so almost everyone in the mission experienced changes of one sort or another. Usually, President S would make most of the transfer decisions, but now that President R is here, we had a huge and intense and spiritually heavy role to play! We felt it. The decisions we made had the possibility of effecting the eternal destiny of some of God's children. It was a little stressful! But we are all good now! And during the process we did miss 2 preparation days... I am sorry. But I do love you very much, and I pray often that God will let you feel that, even when I cannot write. I love you a lot. I really do. We had a really cool experience with someone that we started teaching! We had a referral for a sister named H (the girl that referred her was named Ch... Funny eh?) and we went by to see her... And she was so excited to learn more about the Church that we go to! So we went to the lobby downstairs and talked for 2 hours straight about the Restoration of Jesus Christ! She loved it. She kept mentioning how it made a lot of sense to her, but that she wasn't sure. We told her "PLEASE DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT WE SAY. The cool thing about this church is that you don't have to just take our word for it. YOU CAN KNOW FOR YOURSELF! You can ask God Himself." Well, she just thought that was so cool, and so she asked us to come back the next day... And we did... And she loved it even more! Then she moved to Canada. Oye! But she will be back in a couple of weeks. She promised before she left that she was going to read the entire Book of Mormon while she was in Canada! I'll tell you the rest of the story when it happens! Yesterday, was transfers and we were sick of sitting in the office so we got out of there and we're trying to find some people who wanted to here our message, and we knocked on a door and young lady answered it. We talked to her a little bit, and then told her a little taste of our message. She accepted it well and invited us to come back! There are so many people joining he church here! The work is going forth!

transfers were a lot of fun. Monday morning at 4:00, we drove all of the departing missionaries to the airport including my trainer, Elder S. He is gone! Going back to Harvard. That same morning, we also picked up the Twenty bewildered new missionaries! That is one of my FAVORITE THINGS TO DO! They are so ready to go, and yet have no idea what is going on. This was a powerful group of missionaries that came in. They will be a Great strength to this army! Elder B came in to. He said that he knows Dany  really well. Tell Dany hi for him! We took them to the temple and had some powerful training and testimony from President R! Tuesday morning we got them all up at five thirty and we all went and worked out with Vin (the personal trainer/Mr. Arizona/ Ex-Marine that works out with us every morning). It was so good. The new missionaries didn't like it so much though! I pray all is well! Have a great day. I love you all A LOT!

Elder Flake

Dear Family,                                                       7/21/016

So, we've had some pretty fantastic things happening this week!
Monday, I actually had a preparation day... First time in a long time!
We had a really good lesson with some investigators that we met just
because a normal family like ours invited some friends to family home
evening! How easy is that?!? I invite you to try it! What's the worst
that could happen? You help someone be happier than they ever thought
possible? Come on now (: Tuesday was just as great! We had some good
studies in the morning and then I made some cookies during our lunch
for an a girl named S who has really been investigating the
church and reading the Book of Mormon and trying to figure out what is
true and what is not. Anyways, we made cookies for our recent convert,
N, to take to a lesson that we assigned N and some of the
members to go and teach, but the rest of N's family are not
members so we decided to drop the cookies off for her to take at her
house, even though we knew she wasn't home... And because of that we
met A! We taught him of God and how to pray... And we met with
him again yesterday. He said that when we were at his house the last
time, he felt like an arrow pierce his heart when he said the prayer.
So he is coming along just great! And this is just the begging of the
stories! From Tuesday to Friday I went up to the Whiteriver and
Cibique Indian reservations up around Show Low, and those places are
like 3rd world countries. Honestly. Those places are lawless. It has
the highest per capita murder rate in the entire country! Needless to
say, I enjoyed it. I love you.

Dearest You,                                               7/11/16

WOW I MISS YOU! So this week has been AWESOME! We basically had a full
week of JUST DOING MISSIONARY WORK! Kind of... We had a few meetings,
but not as many as usual! HALLELUJAH. I do apologize for not writing
last week! Things have been rather intense around here with the new
mission president and such! He is AWESOME! President R is one
of the sweetest, most compassionate, and Sociable person that I have
ever met. It is nice. You would love him. I'll see if I can send some
pictures! We found this awesome knew investigator who is SO SINCERE
AND SEARCHING SOOOOOO INTENSELY FOR ANSWERS. She meets with us as much
as she can, for as long as she can and has so many great questions. I
have decided that I do not ever want to be rich. It is gross. Not
good. It really messes people up. So, the average price of a house in
the area we cover is around 2.5 million dollars.... THE AVERAGE. Yeah,
money really doesn't buy happiness. In fact, the more money you have,
the harder it is to be happy. It IS POSSIBLE, just extremely
difficult. HONESTLY, I think I'd rather be homeless than have all that
money... EW. Anyways, I love you all. See you soon!

Elder Flake

Hello my Friends!                                                                     6/27/16

This week was just awesome. At the beginning of the week, we had 3
exchanges. That we're just wonderful! I was with Elder S and
Elder Bh in Central Phoenix, and then with Elder E (he is a
very sweet missionary from Germany!) and Elder Wr in South
Scottsdale. And then with Elder Ss in Pinnacle. It was fun! It is
so EXCITING TO REALLY INSPIRE MISSIONARIES IN THE SAVIORS WAY. That
is, one by one. This work is very personal and must be done ONE BY
ONE. With investigators and missionaries alike.

Friday... We did A TON of planning...tuns of it. Then, we taught the
GOSPEL! It was so empowering and invigorating! It is so cool how alive
and passionate you feel when teaching the good word of God! Saturday,
we also did a lot of planning! Oye!

Well, I think that I will just write some letters instead of a long
email! Let me know how you all are doing! Love you

Elder Flake

HELLO FRIENDS!                                               6/20/16

I realize that I emailed a couple of days ago, but I HAVE A LOT TO
SAY. So, LISTEN UP! I love you. That's it. That is all I got. Have a
great week! See you soon (:

Elder Flake

Family                         6/10/16

JUST KIDDING! I have a lot more to say than simply "I love you!" Perhaps that is the most important thing I can say, but that is definitely not everything I've got!

Right after we had all gone to the temple in Snowflake, we had pictures and then... We had to sit and council with President and Sister S to create a massive fire evacuation plan for all our missionaries in the Show Low Zone, because there was A MASSIVE fire that started up right outside of town. So, that was pretty exciting coordinating all of that. Fortunately, they got the fire under control a few miles outside of town. But it was a very close call. 

 I have really purged my soul and my mind, and all is well. Whatever wounds may have shallowly afflicted me, they are healed. Completely and entirely. I am a new man in Christ. The past is at my back, and the future is in my eyes! Don't worry about me. I had a really cool experience these past couple of days. I had the opportunity to do 3 endowments in three days. I learned much, but I started to gain a fire to once and for all overthrow the effects that past sins have had on me.. I love you.  Love you! See you in less than a year!

Elder Flake

6/10/16

I am here and I am praying for you. I love you and hope all is well. I have never been more busy and stretched in my life. Spiritual growing pains are real. I hope that I am becoming something useful to God. I feel terrible for not being able to communicate much with you and the family. I apologize. I am so sorry. Please know I love you And convey my love to the rest of the family.

Elder Flake