I don't feel older!

Happy Birthday Elder Paxman!!

He is 21 years old today! 

His letter is below, but I just had to add a few pictures first!

I scanned a few pictures of our sweet, cute little blonde boy.

Now he's all grown up, but still just as sweet.

I am very proud to be his mommy!

Dear Mom,

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes!! I really liked the package mom it was great! I loved the little book!! It is amazing, I want its counterpart which I think is the little missionaries quote book, or something like that! Although I want it too!

Is your camera working good enough to take pictures? Are you taking pictures?  I am taking pictures, it is hard when the camera does shut down every once in a while.

I know you don’t usually choose birthday cake, so what would you have chosen in place of cake?  I would have Peanut Butter Frosts for my B-day dessert.

Do you have any fun plans for your birthday? We are going out to eat with an awesome member named Eddie tomorrow. He is taking us to Texas Roadhouse!!! He said we are all buying the biggest steaks and eating to our hearts content!! Maybe I will even ride the saddle!!

Are you going to the temple soon with the Ramirez family?  Are you still going to be able to do that? Brother Ramirez, Erik went and got Endowed this past week and we are going this Saturday. They are getting sealed this Saturday. So we are going to go do Endowments and then go to the sealing.

What do you think of a cruise for Christmas instead of spring break?  I am do down to go on a cruise!!! That would be awesome!! Especially since I want to work on having a rockin bod by the time we go ;) bahahaha. Yea right I enjoy junk food too much. Sounds like a fun Christmas to me!! I will look forward too it. What if I have a girlfriend though? hahaha if only mom... If only.

I told him we had the kids over for homemade Café Rio salad on Sunday and thought of him for his birthday. Also that the weather was so nice we went for a Sunday walk.  I am jealous of the weather!! When I get back it will probably be in the 100's and way hot! Here it is cold and snowing off and on. It was warm the last two days though. Homemade cafe rio salads huh... I would have had to adjust that a little. Salads are for rabbits, that and I can't really eat lettuce.

How has your health been?  Feeling better?  Does Sister Steadman check up on you frequently or just let you coast along? I am feeling better, today I am doing alright. I am not sure if I should start the anti-biotics or not. I hesitate sometimes to take it. I will get it in the works to go get my blood drawn soon.  She usually just lets me coast along. She calls and checks on me probably once a month, unless I let her know that I am sick.

We enjoyed your story last week and are glad you were a good example. I know missionaries can get a little rowdy, and that is fine. But there is a very fine line. Maybe I am just a stickler though. I am glad as well that we were able to be examples for one another and hopefully rightful representatives of the church. We goof around too, but it is all in its own time and space. I am glad you enjoyed the story and everything that came with it afterwards.

How are Sergio and Judy your two new investigators doing? Is Judy an investigator or a less active member? Sergio is doing really well, we had a lesson with him today that went really well. We have one with Judy today too! So that should be really nice and fun. They are both progressing well, Sergio very very quickly. Judy is an investigator although she feels like a member a lot of the time haha.

Do you think you can get a baptism before transfers? That would be awesome for Elder Ryan. That would be amazing, but transfers are in just a few weeks, so I am thinking that will not happen, unless we stay for another, which is near impossible.

How is the new convert Carlos doing? Carlos comes to church every week and is doing well. They struggle at times, but they are still active and are trying.

How are the Seymour Elders?  Have they still been teaching Bertin? The Seymour elders are doing good as far as I can tell. We will be going on exchanges here soon with them. Bertin though is now not taking lessons which is really sad. They ran into him having a huge bible class with a bunch of other people and he told them he had found his church... This broke my heart mom... I still believe one day he will be baptized. I have felt it, I just know it!

Are you still enjoying being DL?  What do you do at a DL meeting and how often do you have them? I am still enjoying it. It is stressful, but worth it at the same time. We have them usually once a week. It entails training's and talking about the work. Helping lift and inspire on all fronts.

Have you heard from the Diaz family?  How are they doing? I have not heard from them. I am going to give them a call this week, to hear how they are doing and everything. From what I know they are still doing well and going to church and everything. We will find out here soon.

Do you feel old now that you are 21? I am trying to get back into working out really hard in the mornings; it is hard to get motivated to do that sometimes. I have been working on drinking a lot more water as well, just to be healthier and everything. I don't really feel a ton older, yet I do... So yea that hasn't changed much.

I shared a few fun memories from when he was a little boy.  Hahaha the good old days when all that mattered was how many bugs I could kill, snakes I could catch, adventures I could have and time I had with dad, good old times. Now there is a lot more to worry about, although I enjoy just feeling like a kid sometimes. hahahaha. We will always be your little kids though mom, even if we live far and grow up and do other things. That is one of the promises isn't it? Although some of those memories I would rather not remember... hahaha so yep it feels so close yet so distant, as does much of the past and the future, so might as well enjoy today, before it becomes the same.

Okay so my spiritual thought and then I will wrap up. So we had a lesson this week with one of my favorite people in this area a LA (less active) named Karina Banda.  She is an amazing lady that I have come to love. I have had a many spiritual experience with her.  So it starts with Saturday, we were there visiting, and I told her something. "So it is my birthday on Monday and I only have one wish..." She asked what it was. I said "I want to see you in church this next week. I will save you a spot and everything. So she thought about it and said YES!!!! I pinky promised her on it. (yes literally). So she told me she always sat in the back right. I said okay, then I will be waiting back there. So about 45 min before the meeting she texts and says she won't be able to come. After much time giving her a hard time, I said okay. I will keep up my promise though and sit in the back right, all alone. So I did. We also got pictures of it. So anyway, later we were going to swing by seeing as she wasn't at church. We had Hno. Creast with us, who is an awesome guy. So we went and were able to talk to her for about 3 hours!!! It was long, but I think amazing! We talked over many things. The biggest one and the one I will talk about today is this. "You make your own happiness!" I realized that I had learned this or had to learn it early in my life. We are the makers of our own happiness. For we are here to have Joy as the scriptures say. So it was amazing. I feel so strongly about this. I have had an interesting life, and it has been filled with so much emotion. Gladly probably the biggest one is joy. Sheer happiness to be alive. Enough to smile at people and see them smile back. I have tried many times to be happy in my life. It is very hard some days, but it is so worth it! I love to laugh and have a fun time as do everyone. So we just try our best to be happy and move forward. For me it is in the little things. God is in the details for me. He is in the letters from home, the smiles from a friend. The letter from a girl you have had the biggest crush on since you met her. The love of the Lord, and so many other things. I truly know and testify that we are the makers of our own happiness!! SO be happy, make it happen, it will be hard some days. I know it is, trust me. Although I know there is always something to be happy about. There are always starts no matter how dark the night. The dawn breaks even in the darkest of days. I love this gospel and the happiness it brings me. I know it can bring it to the entire human race, if they but accept it. "So love your life, perfect your life, and beautify all things in your life. That way when it comes your time to die you can sing your death song, and die like a hero going home" I love that quote. Happiness is to be had, so my challenge is to go find it.

I love you so much and sorry this email is a little shorter than some. I hope you have an amazing week filled with the true Joy of the love of our Heavenly Father, for it is always there for the taking. I love you so much and hope you have an amazing week!!

Love, Elder Paxman 

A Ride on Eagles Wings

Dear Mom,

Doc stuff first I guess. Well first off I don't know how the tests results are, so I will let you know when I find out.  I think my doctor might be LDS, He knew that I served for 2 years and also that he called me Elder when he first walked in the room.  I also only ate one table away from him at lunch that was funny. Ok other than that he isn’t sure what the plan is. First we are going to try the prescription, but this last week I got pretty sick again, so that wasn’t good. We made a general battle plan.  He said he wants me to meet with a surgeon just in case something goes wrong or who knows what, like a contingency plan.  I will meet with him again on Halloween and he is thinking of getting more tests done. (Upper GI and CT Scan) Also he asked how many Cat scans I have gotten in my life, I had no clue I said a lot, then he is like "number wise?" I said it was like probably in the 50's. (NOT even close, he has had about 5 or 6. 50 would make him a walking radiation zone.  I think he was confused with how many X-Rays he has had) He also he asked me about my other doctors and surgeons and what the whole story was.  He gave me a direct line to his nurse.  I am calling the nurse tomorrow when she is in office, and I will try and get that number to you next week sometime. The x-ray's looked interesting, from my view of what I could tell there looked to be one dilated part on the upper right so my upper left but she pointed at it and said it was gas. The doctor’s office is about 30 min. from the apartment.  It is up in Carmel, so we got to see the temple construction sight, it looked super sick!!! (Remember sick is Indiana speak for awesome) I am feeling good today hiccups every now and then it seems, but overall pretty good.

Although my bike is not doing as well, it is dying which is what I worried might happen, it was a cheaper bike and it has taken me already like 500 miles or more.  Plus the roads here stink, so I might be getting a new one of those.  We now are able to get a discount at good bike stores for like 20% off on bikes, so I will keep you posted on that.

That bites about your foot I hope it gets feeling better, but at least you can bike or swim!! hahaha Yes I read the Book of Mormon  in Spanish, but right now I just do it to help with pronouncing stuff.  I will start entirely reading it in Spanish probably in about two weeks or so. It is getting a little cooler here, it was in the 70's for part of this last week.  I can’t wait for the leaves to change, it will be super nice.  Also we can wear sweaters now, so I want you to get on to the LDS website and look up what kind of sweaters I can wear and then get me some, because you know how much I enjoy sweaters haha.

That is good about bowling. (I asked him how exchanges with his DL went)Yes we did the exchange it was good, nothing too eventful.  We met one lady who was super prepared, she answered the door and when we introduced ourselves she started crying.  We gave our whole introduction and told her some really good messages, so they are looking forward to going back and visiting her. Although, she is in his area, so I won't know too much of what goes on there.  The translating for parent teacher conference was super fun.  I learned a lot of new words and it was kind of fun to see how much I actually know! I also felt the translating went really well overall, although I felt bad if the teacher was rippin into a kid and I had to translate.   I usually fluffed it up a little. I translated a lot for kindergarten through 3rd grade.   We still bike and share the car, we each have it for about 4 days unless one of us needs it for something more specific, then we will switch. 

Transfers are on the 9th I believe... But that is just off the top of my head, also I believe that I am being transferred, which makes me sad... but I am also way excited. (I told him that Kyle bought a new tie every time he was transferred and I thought that was a cool idea)  That would be way cool, I am going to have to do that with the ties, so I am going to buy one here soon. (I also asked him if he can bless the sacrament in Spanish and if he has been called upon to help with that)I do not bless the sacrament, I know how to in Spanish but they usually don’t have us do that.  We sometimes help with passing.  We also help with leading music and stuff if they don’t have enough people or the chorister lady is not there.  

I thought the picture of dad was hilarious!! That is good that you had a thing with the gang I remember when we used to do those all the time. Also thank you for the update on everyone, it is interesting to see what people are doing out there in the world.

Well the work here is going about the same, we are having a hard time finding investigators still, but we work on that a lot.  We knock a ton, but we are going to be working with LARCS more to see if we can improve that, also bring some back to church. (I have no idea what LARCS is)We had 2 come to church last week, so that was really good.  One of my favorite members, Hermano Martinez got back from a business trip so it was awesome to see him. None of our gators came to church....   but that’s okay we will keep working on them. Ivonne knows the church is true and the Book of Mormon is the word of God, she is ready for baptism pretty much, but Jesus is still struggling with getting a good testimony of Joseph Smith.  He is also struggling in picking between our church or another. We will see today, we have a lesson with them later. Other than that lots of biking, knocking and stopping by people.  I also saw Celeste which was nice she is no longer our investigator because she goes to IUPUI which is the ZL's jurisdiction, that made me mad, but she is going to be baptized in not too long so I am excited for that!! I am getting her contact info to stay in touch when and if I am transferred because I might baptize her!!!!!!!! Oh Yea!!!!! I am stoked for that if that happens, but I have no idea haha.  As long as they get her baptized it is good with me. Other than that not much new this week, just keepin on goin and  giving it all we have got.  We are going to try and work out differences in the companionship so we can have more power when we teach, so that is good.  Well I need to end because I have to write other people. Well I love you all and I hope this week will be awesome for you at home, I love you all so much and remember who we truly are, (a deep concept I know) but I like to think about deep things every once in a while. Well Love you and have a great week.

Love, tu hijo, Elder Paxman   

P.S. This statement came from his letter to Bailee and Kyle.  “Remember the Lord is always by our side and has promised us a ride on Eagles wings”