I'm getting 6 week shafted!

Hello Everyone!!! 

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving! Both sets of missionaries in the Dayton ward went to a single sisters for a Thanksgiving meal at lunch time. I ate so much then that for our dinner our, I just laid on the floor. It was really good! We then weren't really sure what to do after we were done eating though. Holidays as a missionary are hard because you really don't want to irritate people when they are with their families. What we thought to do was walk around downtown Dayton and hand out the cards for the Church's Christmas initiative. No one was really on the streets though, they were inside where it was ward and had an abundance of food. It all worked out though. 

I am leaving Dayton and will be going to Eastgate, Ohio. I am kinda bummed I am leaving Dayton. The area is really just starting to take off and both Elder Grass and I are leaving. I feel like the area will be in good hands, though. Someone I came out with is taking over the area and is training a new missionary. He should do a good job. I am going to be with Elder Manning in Eastgate, we are getting doubled in and we will be the zone leaders. Elder Grass told me that him and Elder Manning are practically the same person, so luckily I like Elder Grass! Getting doubled in is going to be interesting. Zone leaders aren't usually doubled in, but now I get to be doubled in with someone who I am not training! This should make things a little bit easier. I can't wait!

Thank you for everything! Especially your prayers, they really do work.
I love you!!!
Elder Hayden Cannon

We met an awesome family!!!

Howdy!!!

Things have gone super well this week. Last Sunday, we got a referral from President Welch, which is kind of a rare occurrence. It was from another mission president in Guam who has a sister missionary there whose family lives in Dayton. She wanted us to go visit them. We did and they are an awesome Micronesian family! We met Channell and her mom who are both members. Channell has a fiance, 3 kids, and a nephew who live with her who are all not members. We had some awesome lessons with them and it was great! All of them came to church!!! It was our first time having investigators at church for the entire transfer. It was great! We are really excited to work with them.

I had a thought that I liked during studies the other day. The atonement is meant to save us from both physical and spiritual death. If we are supposed to be saved from those "deaths" then our purpose is to live, both physically and spiritually. The Doctrine of Christ is the instructions to be spiritually alive and to thrive. Heavenly Father wants us to return to Him, but we are to live the Doctrine of Christ to be able to achieve our eternal potential. I love this gospel and the eternal nature of it. There is a quote that I would like to share about this. 

"The great beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the reality of eternal progression we are not only allowed to change for the better but also encouraged, and even commanded, to continue in the pursuit of improvement and, ultimately, perfection."
     -Jean B. Bingham

This is how we spiritually thrive!

Thank you for all that you are doing! I love you!
Elder Hayden Cannon

'Twas My Birthday

Hello!!! Things are going well here in Dayton!

This week was a little slow, but some great things happened. Something that I just found out is that an investigator that I found in Fort Wayne and worked with quite a bit, just got baptized!!! I am so happy about that! Also, Joyce who Elder Lilly and I baptized got to go to the temple!!! That is so awesome to see people that I worked with progress in the gospel, even if I wasn't there for all of it.  

Something that I have learned and continue to learn is that people in the Midwest like to talk! We met these investigators on Saturday and one of them would start talking over us, then the other would start talking over her and they were both asking questions, both of which we were then supposed to answer. It was a struggle teaching them. We are still going to be teaching them later this week. It should be fun. 

My birthday was pretty fun. It was a pretty regular day as a missionary. We did have zone meeting though and it was the first one that I have been a zone leader for. I enjoyed it. I really like giving trainings.  

There was an analogy that Elder Grass used in a lesson that I had never heard before that I really liked. If you are out in the wilderness and your two options are to drink out of a pool of stagnant water or a flowing stream, which do you drink from? You drink from the flowing stream because the movement acts like a filter and cleans the water. A stagnant pool only builds up bacteria that will make you sick. Our spirits are the same way. We must keep moving and progressing spiritually in order to remain clean. When we stop taking the step we know that we should to keep moving towards our Heavenly Father and to stay spiritually alive, we start to grow spiritual bacteria that will eventually cause us great harm. I really liked that and I wanted to share it with you. 

Thank you! I love you!

Elder Hayden Cannon 

Elder Cannon and his companion Elder Grass

My first Mission Leadership Council!!!

Howdy!!!

This week was pretty good! Elder Grass and I are doing some great work here. We are getting along well and we are teaching in unity! We spend a lot of our time laughing at each other! Very good things. We were able to find 5 new investigators this week and most of them were media referrals. Media referrals are really nice because it is someone that has said, "Missionaries, come over!!!" Sometimes they aren't quite as enthusiastic about us showing up at their door, but it is usually a good way to find new investigators. 

On Friday, Elder Grass and I went to Mission Leadership Council. It was awesome! I was so excited to go and see all the other Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders. Those are a really good group of missionaries. I was able to receive a lot of good revelation that we can then take to our zones and help them to know where the mission is going and how it is getting there. We weren't able to do any proselyting that day because the meeting was in Cincinnati, but we were still really excited because we got 4 media referrals while we were there. But when we looked at them on the computer, they were all for the other Elders in Dayton... That was a bummer. 

On Saturday I was able to go on an exchange in Greenville! That was really cool! It was interesting to visit an area that have served in before. It was especially nice because I was able to see people that I wasn't able to say goodbye to because I was emergency transferred out of Greenville. I was really happy to be there. 

Whelp, that makes up my week. 

Thank you!!! Love you!!!

Elder Hayden Cannon   

"I mean... It's Dayton..."

Hello everyone!!! 

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a safe Halloween. We are going to be staying inside tonight so there isn't anything weird that could happen with missionaries and Halloween. Don't worry, we have received some assignments from President Welch to keep us occupied. 

Dayton is a very interesting place. There are things that you just wouldn't really see anywhere else other than Dayton, Ohio. People are interesting, they drive interesting, they talk about weird stuff. It is fun though. On Friday, we met the most racist woman I have ever met in my life... That was an experience. When ever we see something that is out of the ordinary, but it normal for Dayton, we say, "I mean... It's Dayton..." 

We do a lot of service here for members. It is pretty fun. We have been helping with a roof of a barn. One day, we were demolishing this shed that was attached to it and the next we were putting on shingles. The roof was really steep though and I really didn't like being on it so I wasn't much help. They were some fun projects. 

The work here is a little slow, but we are working to find some new investigators to teach and help them progress. Elder Grass and I need to involve Heavenly Father in this work more. If we don't, we are going to keep running into a wall, and headaches aren't fun. 

Thank you for everything! I love you!

Elder Hayden Cannon

Hello from the mishmarries in Dayton!!!

Hello everyone!!!

I am really excited to be in Dayton! it is very interesting to be in a city again, but this time I have a full time car! That is really nice to have. I am really enjoying it though. 

Elder Grass is my companion. He is from Sandy Utah. He is pretty cool. A big thing that I have learned on my mission is that the world doesn't have to be nor should it be organized into cliques. To be perfectly honest, Elder Grass and I probably wouldn't have spoken to each other before we were missionaries. We are excited to work together though. We have only been together a week and we are already able to teach people in unity. That was a really cool realization.

Being a zone leader hasn't seemed all that different so far. All we really do is help everyone in the zone continue to effectively work. It really has only been a week, though. I don't think I can give it a fair evaluation. I am really excited for Mission Leadership Council where all of the zone leaders and sister training leaders meet at the mission home with President Welch and have a meeting with him. Once I go to that, I think I will start to feel like a zone leader. 

This week we found some really cool new investigators. We got these two referrals from teenage girls and we were a little worried about them. Teenage girls have a reputation of being hard to teach for elders. These girls though are awesome!!! They are taking this college religion class and they had some sister missionaries from another mission (we think) come to their class and talk about Mormonism. They were really interested and are writing a paper about it. Their looking into the church at first does seem like an academic search, but we see some great potential in both of these girls. One of them had read all the way into the Book of Jacob in 2 days! We couldn't believe it! It was great to talk with them!

Thank you for everything! I love you!

Elder Hayden Cannon   

P.S.

I said "mishmarries" because there is a family in the ward here with a 4 year old daughter who says "missionaries" like "mishmarries." I thought I should include that. I thought it was cute. 

Elder Cannon and Elder Grass

My crusade on New Castle is done...

Hello Everyone!!!

Things have been going well here in New Castle. Elder Davis and I have been able to find a good amount of potential investigators which is really setting up the area for some great success. We had 3 people who were planning on coming to church but by Sunday morning, all of them were unable to come. That was a bummer. 

I had a very interesting experience giving a blessing this week. Our branch president took us to give a sister a blessing because she is having some trouble with her kidneys. I did the anointing and the branch president gave the blessing. He tends to give rather long blessings and this was no exception. I got up to the circle and made sure that my legs were a good distance apart and that I was bending my knees so that I wouldn't pass out. Even with all of that precaution, I still began to feel woozy. Even my tongue began to tingle, that was weird! I tried my best to push through and stay in the circle, praying to myself that the blessing would end. Finally, when it did end, I just about fell on the couch that was right behind me and was super pale. I asked Elder Davis how pale I was compared to the guy who died at the library and he said that I was about half as pale. That was a weird experience. I have since found out that I can leave the blessing if I need to, but at the time, I didn't know that I could. 

I found out this morning that I am leaving New Castle. I am going to miss this branch. We have done some good work here. Elder Davis is going to continue to do really miraculous things here. I have a lot of faith in him. I found out this morning that I am going to be a zone leader in Dayton, Ohio! I am really excited! That is the same zone as Greenville is in. Hopefully I will get to go on exchanges there some time!   

I love this work and I am excited to see what it has in store for me! I love you all! Thank you for everything that you do!
Elder Hayden Cannon