December 8th, 2014

To the best mom in the world,
Man, email communication is so not as good as in person :p Yes,
President said no to the dropbox stuff. I am trying to ask him if
there is another way to accomplish the same thing.
I DID get the green box! It made me laugh! I share everything with
everyone in the apartment, so everyone says thank you! Thank you for
sending it, mom! I love you. Thank you for the letters too; It was
great to get something from Brian and Kait as well.
Now that I think about it, I think those were from Dads house, but I
can't remember. Anyways, tell them I love them and that I am so proud
of them and how well they are doing in basketball! Hopefully things
aren't toooo crazy with basketball taking over. Have you been making
sure to take time for things like family home evening? Do you and
Andrew still study scriptures together? Do you have family scripture
study? I know that when we make time to do those things that the Lord
will bless us, as families especially.
So with the iPads, we are only supposed to use them strictly for
missionary purpose. However, I did discover that I can connect my SD
card from the camera into the computer and send photos that way (which
I did today). I will send more next week. Also, with Facebook, I still
have hours of work to do cleaning it up, but I am making progress. By
the time I am done, you will for sure be able to able to see what I
post (for now I can't post anything though). I think everyone is still
restricted on my friends list, huh? How does that affect you, out of
curiosity?
Quick answers to questions you asked:
    #1 yes, Azmar is the guy I gave the tie to when he said he liked it.
    # 2 Brodey is indeed the only member in his family. His younger
brother Noah will be baptized      on the 10th of January. Because the
only thing that is holding back Doug and Charlene Shaffer (the
parents) is things related to the word of wisdom and tithing, and the
kids don't have that problem, they are leading the family in a way. I
feel like the parents will be baptized eventually, but it has been a
process. They come to baptisms all the time, come to church almost
every week, and stuff like that. We call Charlene "Sister Shaffer"
already :p and pretend to give her hugs when we shake her hand. We hug
Doug all the time :p He is big and buff x)
Also, I am sending you an envelope with 3 pictures of the Phoenix
Temple to you. Do you think that you could give one to Emily and have
the kids give one to Dad (and keep one for yo and the family there).
They won't have frames when I send them, but I have seen the Bishop
give away some that were framed and they looked beautiful. And the
frames were from the dollar store! :O haha, honestly the frames that
he got from the dollar store seemed to match it better than any other
frame ever could. It is such a beautiful picture.
Did I miss anything? So hard to keep track! :p
I love you and I miss you!
Love,
Your missionary and son:
Elder Austin Shaffer



I realized that I have not really shared any experiences with you from
my past week, so here is one or two:
Friday night to Saturday night was exchanges with the Zone leaders. I
went with Elder Miller to the YSA stake area (their apartment is in
the same complex as ours, but hey drive a truck!) and Elder Stulen
came to be with Elder Nicholson. I really really like Elder Miller- he
is a great leader who is good at recognizing people's strengths and
has great communication skills. He is great at giving constructive
criticism, which was especially easy because we just seemed to connect
really well. He is from Seattle and is leaving to go back on the 30th!
I think he said Snohomish specifically.
We talked a lot about how to make our lessons in the Glen Lakes are
convert into baptisms through more powerful, shorter, more frequent
lessons. We also discussed the importance of key indicators and how to
use them in our weekly and daily planning. He predicts that I will be
training in just a few months, which is the earliest I ever could
because I am being trained for the first two transfers and a transfer
is a month and a half. I shared with him how great of a leader I honk
he is and he complimented me again saying that I have the perfect
balance of humility and confidence. He said that that is very rare for
missionaries (especially for brand new ones) and asked what I did to
get that or if I was always like that. I told him that for the most
part, I have always been like that. I talked about how everything we
have -what makes us us (our personalities and whatnot) are gifts from
God and shared about how I learned that.
I wish I could write more but I am officially out of time! I love you
all! We have a great, busy area, and I serve with all my heart, might,
mind, and strength!
Love,
Elder Shaffer