June 13, 2016 (I should have thought of putting the date every week earlier.)

Hey everybody!

It's been a great week and I'm loving my mission more than ever!

Eduardo got baptized this week and he's now headed off to Oregon to work up there!  We're contacting missionaries up there to help him out with the new member lessons and to find the church!  He's so great!  A true convert!  We're working with so many great people it would take way too long to update you on all of them!  Just know that more baptisms to come, more converts to be converted, more sinners to repent!!

Just a small observation I've had here on my mission: hard work is the answer to any problem you have! (Except maybe being overworked...)  Anyways, I find that the harder I throw my efforts into the work, the happier I am and the more glorious I feel!  I'm willing to bet anything that it's the same with normal members of the church!  The work of salvation is worked on many different battlefronts! Even Utah, that "zion curtain," has missionary work to be done. The work of salvation doesn't just mean helping somebody get baptized!  Everyone on earth either has or needs to enter into the baptismal covenant.  We need to help those who have made it keep it and those who haven't made it, make it!  None of you can take a casual stance on the work of salvation. The Lord intends us to help each other. The way we do that is through the work of salvation.  Reach out!  Help someone around you!  Lift! Be the person emanating happiness, excitement, love, and concern!  Selfless instead of selfish!  Charitable!  A smile and a positive attitude goes a long way!

Anyways.  I hope you all are having just the time of your lives!  There's no better time than the present!!

Love y'all!

Elder Frame

Baptism!

Thanks for the shirt madi!

I'm Out of Clever Titles

California Fresno Mission=The Best Flipping Place Ever

Anyways, just thought I'd throw that out there for everyone to read.  It's good to get some solid truths in our hearts and souls.  Feel free to come check out the Central Valley anytime.  It may not appear it, but it's got SOUL!

Haha it's been another great week out here in the blessed Vineyard of the Lord and I'm loving being with Elder Flores.  We literally are just tearing it up together!  He's got a great personality, loves to run his mouth, and overall just loves being a missionary. It's contagious!  I love trainees!  They always come with such enthusiasm for the work!  Great stuff.

Eduardo Vielma will be baptized this Sunday!  He's committed to be baptized to prepare himself to baptize his aunt and uncle whom we are teaching also.  They have to get married so they'll have to wait a little bit....  He's so solid and loves learning with us and actively participates in classes in church!  What a stud!  So yes, the work continues.  We are working with so many other great people it's ridiculous!  Stay tuned in the coming weeks for updates on their baptisms and conversions!

Interesting tidbit of study I had this week:  Worship.  What is worship.  It's how we show our respect and devotion to God.  How do we as a church worship? You ever thought about that?  How do you personally worship God is another great topic of thought.  I've come to the conclusion through studies this week that worship is imitation.  Being a sports fan, following People's magazine, or movies, whatever, are all small forms of worship.  We want to be like them or have something we've seen from their.  We like how we feel when we read, watch, or listen to them.  The same goes for our worship with God.  When we truly worship Him, we imitate Him.  And since in John chapter 5 verse 19 states that "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do," we are following the Father by doing what The Son has shown us to do.  True worship is becoming like God through our daily actions.  If we truly worship God then we'll show it in how we live.  And since God is a jealous God, he asks us to worship Him over all other things. So anyways, hopefully that all makes sense.  It was a cool topic of study for me this week and hopefully it made y'all think a little.

Anyways, this work continues to roll on filling the whole earth and I'm immensely grateful to be able to be a part of it!

Elder Frame

LOVING IT!

Hey everybody!  Another week in paradise and helping other people to get there!

So.  I got a new companion.  He is the greatest.  Here's some background:

Elder Flores is a Marine!  He's 18 years old.  He came on his mission like 10 days after being in Iraq for 6 months!  How bizarre is that!  He told me about boot camp and stuff and they put you through hell there!  He's got so many stories.  I just listen to all of them with my jaw on the floor.  So anyways, he was baptized at age 13 and went inactive ever since.  He joined the Marines and he had to choose a church to attend and as he looked down the list he saw the Mormon Church.  He thought "I think I was baptized Mormon..."  So he went there to the branch and the branch president told him he felt that he needed to give Elder Flores a blessing.  When he did so, the branch president said some things that Elder Flores hadn't told anyone and he and the branch president started crying. The experience kind of freaked him out and so he never went back to the Mormon Church after that.  He was then deployed and he forgot about it all, but his branch president found his number and called him every day he was in Iraq.  After a particularly hard mission a catholic priest found out he was Mormon and gave him a book of Mormon.  He opened it up and the first things that he read were Moroni 10 verses 18 and 19.  They spoke to him and changed him.  He told his branch president and they ended up talking about missions and he decided he wanted to serve.  He approached his commanding officer to tell him he wanted to serve and it turned out that his commanding officer served one too!  He was mormon!  So in the end some strings were pulled for him and here he is with me serving in Kerman California to bring other souls to Christ!  He is so great and full of energy!  He loves his mission so much!  Haha he's just on this spiritual high all the time and he loves the environment!  I have loved being his companion so much!

So yeah.  There you go!  We've already had some crazy experiences together and we are planning on many baptisms and a lot a lot of finding the prepared!!  Haha I am so excited!  Elder Flores is like I just got a shot of caffeine straight into my veins! Everything is so spiritual and fun to do now!  Man, I hadn't realized how different companions affect different parts of the work!  I'M LOVING IT!  We'll let you know how our adventures continue to roll!

Love you all! Thanks so much for the continued support!  Christ lives!  He loves us!  He is in the details of our lives!  Find Him in your everyday lives!

Elder Frame

"sprinting to the finish"

Another great week on the greatest adventure of a lifetime!

 We had a great baptism for Jose Luis yesterday!  He finally got baptized!  It's been 8 months coming!  We had a great lesson that morning because we received a call from him that morning with him saying that he felt really sick and that he wouldn't be able to make it to church and his baptism.  We went right over after he told us that and we talked to him about his situation.  He said that he hadn't been able to walk straight because he was dizzy and queasy since his baptismal interview the day before.  We talked about faith with him and then asked if he wanted a blessing.  He said that yes and I anointed him and Elder Matienzo gave him a blessing.  Elder Matienzo told him in the blessing that God would take away the pains from him if he showed faith and went to church and to his baptism.  After the blessing we talked again and he kept telling us "but what if..... or what if...."  I told him after hearing a few of those that having faith would mean going to church and just moving forward with what he committed to do:  be baptized.  He decided that that was right and told us that he'd see us at church.  At church we waited to see him and when he walked up he beamed at us and told us that he didn't feel sick at all anymore.  Then he blamed it all on the chamuco(devil).  Haha it was a great day for him and it'll be an even greater day next Sunday when he receives the Holy Ghost.  He's great and he just wants to go to the temple, so we're working on getting that to happen next week after he receives the Holy Ghost!  So great to be in the service of the Lord!!

Transfers also happened this past week and Elder Matienzo will be leaving me in Kerman.  AND I'LL BE TRAINING!  I wanted to do that so bad!  My last two transfers will be with a brand new missionary and I'll be able to help him see how his mission can be such an amazing life-changing experience for him and those he serves!  It's going to be my "sprinting to the finish" for my mission! Just going crazy trying to help this missionary become better than I ever was!  I'm so excited and I hope he's coming ready to work because that's all we're gonna be doing!  So great!!

I love my mission! I love this church! I love my companion!  I love my investigators! I love my members!  I love Jesus Christ!

Elder Frame

Cool Members here in Kerman!

Jose Luis's baptism!

A few photos!

This was a service we did!  It was pretty sweet!

Dear Jackson,

THANK YOU!

From myself and all of the staff here at the Red Cross I want to thank you for the hard work and dedication you showed this Saturday at our Home Fire Campaign Event in Madera.  Together we made a huge impact that morning and I want you to know that your work is greatly appreciated.  By visiting 80 households we were able to install 120 free smoke alarms and replace 14 batteries to families in need.  That means that we assisted 250 people on Saturday, and all with a workforce of 34 volunteers!

Of course, I must nod my head to the most amazing team from Saturday, Team 3, who were our Golden Smoke Alarm Winners!

Congratulations to Lonnie, Alejandro, Jackson, and Jerry—you guys rock!

Temple pic of the zone!

This is when we high centered our car going through a vineyard to find a member's home...  So yeah.

That's Tlayuda.  Mexican pizza original from Oaxaca.

happy birthday carter since it won't get to you until after your birthday!!!

Hey everybody.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what the purpose of life is.  Deep right.  So anyways here's some study things that I've been chewing on all week long.

1- John 17:3  "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."  The only thing that we need to worry about in life is getting to know Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  How do we get to know who they are?  By learning about them.  By being like them.  Experiencing what they do and what they think is how we become more like them.  That is why it is life eternal.

2- So why is it so hard to just be like them?  We should just be constantly reading, constantly upping our "be-like-god" game.  Why can't we just always choose to be better, be like Him?  Two reasons: First reason: Satan. Second, "The natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord......" (Mosiah 3:19)

3- Mosiah 3:19 connects my first two study points.  The Atonement. AT-ONE-MENT.  Literally the joining, the at-oneing, of two things that were estranged.  We can never on our own "at-one" ourselves with God.  You see these parallels.  We needed someone to ATONE for us. We needed someone to AT-ONE us with God.  Jesus Christ.  We all want life eternal with God.  Jesus Christ made that possible through His Atonement.  We just have to choose through our obedience and repentance that we truly do want it.  Think about it.  Repentance is the process through which we access the Atonement to intercede for our bad actions.  As we repent, or in other words change our actions and will to be more like Gods, we use the power of the Atonement to at-one us with God.  Each time we repent we get a little more closer to God.  Not only spiritually, but in who we are too.  This is what Hugh Nibley has to say about that: "It should be clear what oneness is meant by the Atonement-- it is being received in a close embrace of the prodigal son, expressing not only forgiveness but oneness of heart and mind that amounts to identity, like a literal family identity as John sets it forth so vividly in chapters 14 through 17 in his Gospel."   We literally are becoming as God is as we repent.  It not only cleans us but exalts us through the process.

I could go on for a lot longer and I did have more I wanted to say, but I'm out of time!  I love you all!

Elder Frame

1 My companion was bored during planning, thus this pic was born.

2 A small tortuga that I held.

May 2, 2016