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