Hi,

Well I'm still alive. This week has been pretty great. 

Anyways next Saturday is the 17th of October and we originally had 3
people getting baptized on that day. However now it looks like we're
only having one. Margarita is our most interested investigator and we
believe that she will be ready for the 17th. José her husband doesn't
seem as interested but we're hoping to get his support for his wife to
be baptized and we are hoping that her example will open his heart to
the gospel. As for Kimberly we're going to have to mover her baptism
date back again. She's just never available for a lesson and when we
schedule a lesson with her she's never there. We know that she will
eventually be baptized but it just might take a while.

Ricardo was an inactive when we met him and now he's back at church
every week. He told us that him and his wife never want to leave
again. Our next step with him is to get him to the temple.

Hilda is the mother of about 6 children I think. About 12 people live
in the house so it's hard to know who's is who's. But she has 2 older
girls about my age and 3 others the oldest of which is 10. And
possibly one baby but he might belong to someone else. Anyways the
coolest part about this family is that the most interested people in
the lessons are the 2 youngest girls which I think is cool because I
thought church was the most boring thing ever when I was there age.
But yesterday when we were over there they had their Book of Mormon
Stories book out in front of them and both were bragging about how far
they read. They're also the ones who get up on Sunday and beg their
mom to go to church. I think it's the strangest thing ever but the
reason this family is still progressing is because of these girls.

To answer a few of your questions no I haven't ran into anyone that I
knew. 

There are 3 restaurants that give missionaries free food and we
go to them a lot for lunch. I'm able to exercise but it's always
alone. My companion is really lazy and doesn't want to exercise ever.
I just do a couple workouts I remember from crossfit every morning in
one of the empty rooms. 

We might have found a new investigator but we don't know yet. It's a
home of two sisters and their father. One of the sisters has already
taken all of the lessons and is just waiting for an answer but the
other one hasn't had any lessons. However they told us that their
father (who is never home) is hardcore Catholic and might not like
them being taught so we told them to ask for permission and that we
would get back to them on Thursday. And I do go tracting and it's
usually in the more poor parts of sandy that we find people to teach. 

I think the hardest thing about my mission is opening your mouth to
strangers on the street or sitting outside. It always seems intrusive
and I never want to do it because my Spanish is really bad but I've
been told that I'm going to be doing all of them from now on because
it's time that I get some practice. The best parts about my mission are
meeting and teaching people like Margarita. 

Anyways that's pretty much all that happened to me this week. I hope
everyone is doing well and I wish you all the best. 

Elder Austin

Hey!

The key to happiness is not when you become
important but when others become important to you. 

I'm doing fine here. People feed me a lot. I'm still struggling with Spanish but I can teach the first two lessons pretty well now. I can understand certain types of conversations now. Certain key words let me know what the topic is about. However if the conversation strays
from anything gospel related then I have no clue what's being said. My vocabulary isn't that extensive.

We finally met our landlord this week. His name is Ben. He is a pretty interesting guy because he's 32 and lives in the Stone Age. My grandparents are more advanced than he is. He doesn't own a computer, t.v., he steals wifi from the neighbors, he collects his own honey, and he makes some pretty good salsa. Honesty he's a pretty interesting guy and is very fun to talk to. He works at his own radio sports station and talks mostly about BYU and U of U football.  My companion told him that we need wifi (because we don't get any in his basement) for my language study and missionary training. (We actually don't because we usually just drive to our ward building and just use the church's wifi. However I did not know my companion
told him this). And so all I know at the time is that Ben is considering getting Comcast and asked us to print off the papers and advertisements for him since he doesn't own a printer. We do this at the family history center, bring the papers back to him, and he calls Comcast. The fist thing Comcast does to him is pull a bait and switch and raise the advertised $40 a month to $50 a month. Ben does not like this at all. This is when we learned that Ben has a temper because he just completely loses it. He starts yelling at this poor Indian man on
the phone calling him many MANY names that I cannot write in this email and politely says goodbye and hangs up. He looks at me and says "sorry Austin I was probably really mean to that stupid Indian and it probably was uncalled for but don't worry I'll get you wifi. I know a
guy. I know that learning your language is really important and I get that. Just hang in there with me a couple more days. Can you do that for my bud?" This caught me completely off guard because I've never once mentioned my language needs to him before. So with the most
confused look you can imagine I said "it's fine I'm good?" But he's determined about getting wifi for me because if I don't get my wifi I'll apparently "be so far behind the other missionaries." This is what my companion used as an excuse.

That reminds me I haven't really introduced my companion yet.

This is my companion Elder Fonseca. He tells everyone that he is from Costa Rica but he is actually from West Palm Beach, Florida. He speaks Spanish fluently so he really helps me out. He hates exercising but loves eating. He's pretty friendly and knows pretty much everyone in the mission. He is leaving in 7 more weeks and he calls me "my only begotten son" because I am the first greeny he has ever trained. So apparently that makes him my "dad." I don't come up with the names. Apparently it's a missionary thing. We get along pretty well. He likes to work but he's also pretty lazy because he's really ready to go home. He'll probably be my companion for the rest of his time here so I guess it's a pretty good thing that we get along pretty well. 

I am sorry I do not have any pictures of me but I'll try to get some for next week. My iPad case isn't good for pictures and so I would have to take my iPad out of my case every time I take a picture. 

As for conference we watched it at our next door neighbors house. His name is Paul and he is probably the nicest guy in the world. He would do anything for anyone just because he wants to help others. I've never met anyone this nice. He reminds me a lot of Dave my last boss in Lehi. They could be twins. Anyways we watched the entire conference at his house. 

As for my investigators we still have the same 3 preparing for baptism. Kimberly is the 12 year old girl who has the maturity of a 20 year old because her mother is really disabled physically so she's having to take on the responsibility of caring for the family. She knows what baptism is about but she doesn't really know the commandments. She knows that one of the things we promise to do during baptism is to keep the commandments but she said that she doesn't know what the commandments are. Our next lesson with her will be over the commandments and the sacrament. Hopefully she'll feel more comfortable with the idea of baptism after this lesson. Her mother fully supports her in investigating the church and she would become a member too but she is currently getting a divorce and living with someone she is not married to so she would have a little bit to do before we could even consider extending her a baptism date. 

José and Margarita are in the same state as always. If it were up to Margarita she would be baptized tomorrow but she still wants to wait for José to be ready.we're trying to get them to temple square and have a lesson there. We're also going to talk about modern day prophets with José to try help him better understand the importance of prophets. Right now it's all about getting José reading the Book of Mormon and praying. 

Vania is the one who was getting attacked by her family. Fortunately her family is gone for the moment and she is still up for meeting with us. We gave her the talk "My Words... Never Cease" to help her with her doubts about Joseph Smith. We are also trying to get her to go to temple square with us. 

Today for P-day me, my companion, Elder Fonseca, this guy my district leader Elder McCarthy and this guy, Elder Armantrout  are going to wallabies for Elder Armantrout's birthday.

It's an Australian restaurant. Afterwards we're going to a place called airborne which is like sky zone only cooler. So yeah that's pretty much what I do during P-days.

Concerning Christmas send me everything sweet and delicious and minty that you can find. Also letters from everyone would be nice. Also maybe a cool piano book.

Anyways I hope everyone is doing well,

Love, Elder Austin

This makes 2 months pretty much. It's going by pretty fast. The work
is going by slow however. Our investigators are struggling with going
to church and some of them are getting back lash from their families.  It's pretty annoying. 

Anyways I'm still alive and doing well. Everyone loves giving the
missionaries food so I am definitely not starving. We have this one
family who feeds us every Friday and every time I eat there I feel
like throwing up afterwards because of how much they feed us. It's
very rude in Hispanic culture to not finish everything on your plate.
So this family makes sure to give us at least three servings of food
on one plate every time we go over. I look at the rest of the family's
plates and they have normal servings. It's not fair! It's just too
much!!.......yeah so anyways I'm fed pretty well.... 

Some of our investigators are really struggling. We have this one
investigator who's named Vania and she was on date to be baptized and
was actually excited about it. However when she told her family about
this she immediately got chastised and told that she was a complete
idiot for listening to our lies. The last time we stopped by was today
to see if she was still good to go to church. Her mom was standing out
in the yard and told us that she wasn't home and that she wanted us to
leave. I think that we just lost one of our solid investigators. It's
really sad when you can't even find peace with your family. 

José and Margarita are progressing really well however and something
crazy happened with them. We went by the house prepared to teach the
Plan of Salvation for the first time. They invited us in and we were
sitting in the living room when Margarita felt like she needed to
share a dream with us that she had about two years ago. She said that
in the dream she was in another world which was so beautiful and so
much better than the world we live in. She said that everything was
perfect and there was this beautiful river with many different types
of fish in it and standing by the river was Jesus. Jesus then said
"This is the third heaven. My father lives here but you are not ready
to meet him yet. That is why I'm here." I'm not one to be live in
stuff like this EVER and it still feels really weird whenever I tell
it but just the fact that she's never heard about the three kingdoms
of glory before and to say something like this was really odd. Anyways
once we taught her the Plan of Salvation she accepted all of it. She
said "oh it's just like my dream it has to be true!" We ask her if she
was still planing on being baptized on the 17th and she said yes but
that she wants to wait for her husband José. We asked José the same
thing and he said no actually. He said that he likes our message and
always enjoys talking to us but that he doesn't want to give up
drinking. Which is a problem. And so I'm hoping that he'll gain a
stronger testimony about this gospel and as he does so maybe he'll
gain a desire to change and stop drinking. 

Ricardo came to church this last Sunday. It was the first time him and
his wife have been to church in over a year. They said that they liked
it and hopefully we can get them to keep coming. I still don't think
they trust the members yet but we have some pretty good
fellow-shippers for them. 

My Spanish is still really terrible but I am doing a lot better
teaching the lessons in Spanish. It really helps to read the lessons
out of Preach My Gospel In Spanish and see how it's phrased there. I
can teach the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation really well in
Spanish now. Anything else is not so good. During language study I'll
be reading out of the Spanish version of Preach My Gospel. I try to
talk in Spanish with my companion as much as possible but he just
speaks way too fast and I can't understand a thing and we both get
frustrated and just resort back to using English. It's improving
slowly but surely. 

Anyways I hope everyone is doing well and I can't wait to hear from you.

Elder Austin

Hi, 

My Spanish is coming
along very slowly. I understand a lot but it's just a couple words and
conjugations that throw me off. Also everyone's accent is different
depending on the country they're from so there's that too. 

Okay so my week this week was pretty bad actually. We had almost all
of our investigators cancel lessons on us. My companion says that
sometimes you'll just have bad weeks like that. But we did have some
good things happen. 

Vania is an investigator that the missionaries have been teaching for
a while. She always has questions that are really hard to answer and
she's always trying to find a loophole in the rules that will allow
her to do stuff like drink coffee. Of course we told her she can't and
she has been doing really well on all of her commitments. The largest
challenge we have is getting her to church and getting her to read.
She doesn't see the importance of church and the says that she hasn't
gotten an answer from God that this is true yet. That is when I shared
with her my personal conversion story. I explained Alma 32 and taught
about the metaphor and the invitation. If any of you don't know what
the chapter is about then read it because it is a really good chapter.
I told her that this is the way that I found out and that it was a
long and slow process but the seed grew and now I know. She said that
she will read it because she thinks that it will be that way for her.
We then invited her to be baptized on 10/17. She said that she would
pray about it. She also said that she felt a overwhelming sense of
fear. I told her that change is really scary.and the change we're
asking of her is a big one. But the more the seed grows the more the
fear goes away. I also told her that this is just a goal and she won't
be baptized unless she is truly ready. 

Ricardo is a much older man who is a less active member of the church.
When we met him he welcomed us into him home which was an old trailer
not too far from where Vania lived. He immediately opened up to us. We
asked him why he didn't go to church anymore. He said that he knows
the church is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that its
all true, but a year ago someone did something terrible to him and his
family. A year ago he was regularly attending church and was looking
for a new home for him and his new family. A member offered to sell
him a house and he agreed. The paperwork was all finished, the house
paid for and Ricardo was a proud, new homeowner. Only there was no
house to be sold. The whole thing was a hoax and it was a well planned
hoax. Ricardo took this man to court and lost. This other member of
the church took all of his money and left the area. Ricardo didn't
have the money to pay for his current house anymore so they lost
everything. They now live in an old trailer with him and his wife.
They have no faith in the members anymore and haven't been to church
since. It makes me sick that a member would do something like this.
Anyways we've been trying to get Ricardo to come back and yesterday we
saw him at a branch party. It completely caught me off guard when I
saw him walk through the doors. We welcomed him and showed him to the
gym. Now our Elders Quorum President is one of the greatest guys I
know. When we told him about Ricardo he immediately got up, went over
to him, and introduced himself. He then took him around the gym and
introduced him to about 8 other people and they immediately fellowshipped him into
the Branch. We didn't see him at church today because I think he still
has his trepidations about coming back and trusting people again but
if he does it's going to be because of people like President
Hendricks. 

The party was also insane! It's completely different from the ward
parties back home. Everyone brought food. Also they had flags
everywhere. All the Mexican food when under the Mexican flag and the
Argentinian food went under the Argentinian flag and so on. They even
had a US flag for us gringos. After we ate came the cultural
celebration where people would sing songs and perform dances from
their country. It was really incredible seeing all of the different
cultures gathered in one place. It's nothing like our home ward.

Anyways I miss you. 

Love,
Elder Austin

Hi, hows it going?

I'm doing great!  I was sick as a dog my first week in the field but I'm feeling much better now.  My new companion has been here for 21 months.  He's from Florida but he tells everyone that he's from Costa Rica because that's where he was born. He is fluent in Spanish and English so he has been helping me a lot. We live in the basement of a member's house but apparently we're moving today because the sisters need it. For some reason the wife left the husband of the people they where staying with so now they need to leave. 

We do have a car which is nice and our area is HUGE!!! We have many investigators and the Hispanic community here is enormous!!!! We go tracting a lot in trailer parks and random neighborhoods. We're not allowed to teach English speakers so whenever we run into anyone who speaks English only, we just ask him if he knows any of his neighbors that speak Spanish. My Spanish is terrible! I can't understand anyone! I only get about 30% of what's said and I can understand more than I can speak. But everyone tells me that my Spanish is good for someone who's only been out for 7 weeks. Our main problem with investigators is that no one is married. They all like to live together but none of them are married. And so they can't get baptized unless they do get married. But either the man or the women doesn't want to get married but the other one does. It's really weird. I don't understand. 

All the members here are really good to us. We've had a dinner appointment every day and they feed us way too much!!! Yesterday we had an amazing lesson with a couple. This couple is named José and Margarita. They are related to a family at church and so they were present during sacrament meeting. They're going to be here for 2 more months and they want to learn more about the church. And so later that night we went to the home of the member family's home to teach this couple. We taught the restoration and the entire time you could tell that they were interested. They didn't ask many questions but they were considering everything we told them. You could tell that they were feeling the spirit the entire time. After the lesson we asked them if they would be baptized. We now have two baptisms scheduled for the 17th of next month. 

I hope everyone is doing well and I'll email next week

Elder Austin

THE CHURCH OF

JESUS CHRIST

OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Utah Salt Lake City South Mission
8060 South 615 East
Sandy, Utah 84070

September 9, 2015

 Dear Parents of Elder Austin ,

What a pleasure it was to welcome Elder Kallin Austin  into the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission.  His first day with us included breakfast and orientation at the mission office, a training session, lunch and of course, meeting his first companion. I am impressed by his desire to serve.  He is well and in high spirits as he anticipates the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.  Please be assured that we will be watching over him while he is here.  I'm attaching photographs taken as he was welcomed at the mission office.

After prayerful consideration, an excellent missionary, Elder Fonseca, has been assigned as his trainer and first companion.  I am attaching our Family Guidelines which we urge you to follow.  We have learned from experience the importance of family and friends following these guidelines.  Please share the guidelines with those who may write to him.  Your compliance of these guidelines can reinforce your missionary's willingness to follow the guidelines in the Missionary Handbook.

All hard-copy letters and packages should be sent to the mission, addressed to Elder Kallin Austin  at the address listed above. 

Thank you for raising such an outstanding young person, worthy and willing to serve the Lord full time in our mission.  I know you will be blessed for the sacrifices that make his service possible.  May the Lord's choicest blessings be yours.

Sincerely,

Robert E. Chambers
Mission President

​I am really excited to leave the MTC but I am sad to leave my district. Elder Maloy is going to Sacramento, California so I won't be seeing him any time soon.  Oh and I have some pictures for you.

​Here is me! My Companion, Elder Maloy,  just got his camera and went on a photo spree. 

Here is my CanAsian roommate, Elder Lan, He is from Canada and he is Asian if you could not tell. He has the habit of yelling in mandarin while he sleeps. He also is a martial arts expert. 

This is my other CanAsian roomate, Elder Huang.  He just talks a lot. I don't really have much to say about him.

Here is our fearless district leader, Elder Sargent, drinking wine. (it's not really wine).

Here is his companion, Elder Trujillo, who goes running with me during gym time. He's the nicest guy I know.

This is Elder Thomson. He likes to come into our room at night and talk to us. He's just a really likable guy and gets along with everyone. 

​This is Elder Dean. He likes robotics and rarely talks to anyone. His spirit animal is a squirrel who is plotting to take over the world. Just look at that diabolical smile.   

My spirit animal is apparently a chinchilla and Elder Maloy's is a bat.....es verdad. We have invented a new phrase in Spanish. Pues Entonces. It has no function in the language but if you translate it in English is says "Well then." I'ts always fun saying it to a native from the motherland because they always have the most confused look on their face haha! 

We had Elder Dallin H. Oaks come speak to us this last Tuesday. He spoke about how we can have and keep the Spirit. Only a missionary who has the spirit is a true missionary. He talked about the Sacrament prayers and one of the main blessings of the Sacrament prayers is that we will always "have His spirit to be with them." He then commanded us all to know the Sacrament prayers by heart. "Every member of the church should know the Sacrament prayers by heart." The worst missionary with the spirit is better than the best missionary without the spirit. The same goes for members. 

We also watched a talk where Elder David A. Bednar talked to us about two missionaries that he new. They came over one Sunday for an hour and fifteen minutes playing with the kids and getting to know the family. They then taught them a spiritual message and asked Elder Bednar if he had any referrals for them. Elder Bednar replied with "Elders you know that I love you. So listen closely as I tell you this. I would never give either one of you referrals ever. You have just wasted and hour and fifteen minutes of the Lords time goofing off in our home. I would never trust the either of you with referrals. If you would like referrals from the Bednar home then this is how one would act. They would knock on the door, say 'Elder Bednar; we don't have much time but we would like to share a BRIEF spiritual lesson with your family if that would be okay.' I would then invite them in and gather my family and listen as the Elder's taught a very BRIEF lesson. Then they would ask me for referrals and I would give my referrals. Then I would tell them to get out of my home and back to work."  

I love you and hope everyone is doing well.

Love, Elder Austin