Email received February 9, 2015

Oh my gosh what a week that was!! So we started the Final Four weeks leading up to March Madness and we started it off with a Finding Challenge.. We as a zone broke our record and we as a mission shattered our record for finding new investigators in a week with just over 1000!! So amazing. Zone Meeting earlier this week was great as we had a Zone Council on how we can improve and become united as we all work towards having a "Zion Mission." Tuesday we also had exchanges which was a lot of fun with the West Chester Elders. We were able to help a new couple move into the ward from Missouri which was a good workout ;) Wednesday we gave an awesome Chapel tour to one of our newer investigators and also gave a blessing to an elderly woman in hospice. Her granddaughter who lives in Las Vegas got a hold of us asking to go give her a blessing and also an uncle that lives here in Hamilton. In the blessing I told her she had fulfilled her purpose in this life and she could peacefully pass which she did the next morning. Very spiritual experience! Thursday we had an amazing Zone Conference in which we talked a lot about the Legacy we want to leave behind as 60% of the mission goes home in the next 6 months... That Legacy is as follows.

Be a Zion Mission-One Heart, One Mind
Be a Mission Family-No one left behind, no empty chairs
Be as the Army of Helaman-Each missionary obeys every word of command with exactness
Have Missionaries that love God and serve Him with all heart, might, mind, and strength
Every missionary is a leader who changes patterns
Have a spirit of positivity and enthusiasm for the work
We receive grace to reach ALL goals by living the power triangle.

and this is how we will fulfill that legacy...

Every missionary believes, doubting nothing
We pray for every missionary's success
We pray for the pure love of Christ
We see our areas as a land of promise
We do all the little things every time
We will see ourselves, our companions, our investigators, the members and the ward as God does
Each missionary reaches individual goals
Each companionship reaches companionship goals
Language is always focused on the cause
We live "Remember This" (in the back cover of PMG)

So that's what this mission is up to :) Elder Judd had a great insight as we talked about what we teach others and what they need to know and he said that every time we feel the Spirit, it is a manifestation of God's love for us. How true is that!! The Spirit comes from our Heavenly Father and it conveys truth and comforts us and does all of these wonderful things so anytime we feel the Spirit we can know of a surety that God loves us :)  What a great thought and truth!
It was a crazy weekend running around the area seeing everyone and also of course finding. It's going to be another awesome week and more miracles will rain down!! :) I love you so much! :)

Elder Gunnoe :)

Email received February 2, 2015

This is just bits and pieces of our email with him today:

mornin!! not a lot of time today.. got stuff to do around the zone.. :/
I'm great and tired and good :) i don't know what's up with the mail... i got a card from nana thankfully on saturday which was a relief because hers have money in them. but i was worried about not getting yours that's why i had sis unklesbay ask when you sent em.. we might check with the post office today (he hasn't got any letters from us since he moved to his new area) i asked her to call and check cuz i was worried :) I might be slightly relying on her for pictures for now because of how much running around we've been doing and all that fun stuff... tired just because of how much we run... stake president reports were wednesday night, leadership council all day friday, stake conference saturday and sunday, zone meeting tomorrow, zone conference thursday, exchanges tomorrow and friday... life is fun :) no pics today because i didn't think we'd be emailing this early :/ we are going to another district's fun day because it's just a set of elders and a set of sisters so we're going to offset it so it's not like a double date... then Jungle Jim's later on here in hamilton and more preparing for zone meeting :) gators are doing well! it'll be a busy week with them as we have a finding challenge in the mission preparing for march madness... we're going to do something no mission around here at least has done and baptize 100 in the month of march and to prepare for it we're having challenges each with one with finding one with baptism extensions one with member presents and the last with gators at church. i probably won't be able to knock out a blog email today... It will be a crazy February and a crazy march!! we've had super mild weather... i'm loving it!! ya the weather out farther east has been crazy!! we've had a couple of semi spring like days as well just more clouds.  area is great!! It's fun being in a huge ward with lots of awesome families :)
we'll run by the post office because the same thing is happening to elder sunderland :/
today we're bowling with the liberty district.. we haven't planned our big fun day yet but it'll be awesome :)  i do love bowling :)

Email received January 26, 2015

Well what a transfer week it has been!! I am now a Zone Leader in the Land of Milk and Honey (The Cincinnati North Zone) serving in Hamilton Ohio :D Just above Fairfield where I was born :) (Not literally - Fairfield was his first area out of the MTC)  It's so exciting to be here in this awesome area and this amazing Zone :) My companion is now the great Elder Sunderland. He's an amazing missionary and person, so this is going to be a fantastic transfer. We had an awesome first week, got settled in really quick and got to work! We found quite a few new investigators this week and one was actually quite the miracle! He came into the church dressed and ready for church on his own on Wednesday night because he thought there were Wednesday night services when it was actually just Mutual. So Elder Sunderland and Elder Christensen gave him a chapel tour after he met the bishop and Elder's Quorum President. Elder Wegrowski (Elder Christensen's companion) and I went to a member's house to help them move an old arcade game into their upstairs apartment which was an interesting experience... especially after the top part broke, so me and Elder Wegrowski were sitting there holding it sitting on the stairs while the guy freaked out that the top broke ;) not that it was heavy or anything.. ;) So that was fun.. weather was like spring this week which was really weird but then it rained yesterday and we got like half an inch of snow overnight so it's back to cold -_- But life is great anyways :) it's lots of fun being with Elder Sunderland and working here in Hamilton so I'm definitely looking forward to this transfer! I love y'all so much!! Have a fantastic week!! <3
Love,
Elder Gunnoe

Studying hard :)

New apartment in Fairfield, OH

New companion - Elder Sunderland

Email received January 19, 2015

Well what a week it has been here in Marion Indiana!! And sadly it is my last day here in Marion :( I will miss this area and the people in it and especially Elder Barrett. He's an amazing missionary and person and i know he will do wonderful as he trains a new missionary. I'm gonna miss him... Now I am off to another area to be a ZONE LEADER! Got the leadership call from President this morning and I will now be a Zone Leader somewhere in the Great Ohio Cincinnati Mission! :) We had a great last week of the transfer and the weather was a lot nicer to us :) We got around quite a bit, had interviews Wednesday with President and Sister Porter which went great and then exchanges with the wonderful Zone Leaders on Friday. Yesterday we had lunch at the Turner's after church and had the best meal ever ;) #welcometoIndiana #here'ssomesquirrel That's right ladies and gentleman we had squirrel for lunch ;) Prepared in a stew and it tasted amazing!! Still had a bit of hair here and there but it wouldn't be the same if it didn't ;) It was awesome i loved being at the turners :) #beatthatbrazil ;) anyways i will let y'all know somehow where i am and then return and report next week :) I love you so much!! :) <3 Have a fantastic week :)

Helping out at Center for Success

Found Brazil in Indiana (a bit colder though)

Exchanges

More exchanges

Email received January 12, 2015

What an exciting week we had here in Marion Indiana! It was a fairly mild weather week with temperatures staying below 0 and sometimes the wind chill hitting down to about 26 below 0 :) Fun times ;) We were able to accomplish a lot this week despite the weather as we worked with our ward mission leader on the ward roster and continue to find people and bring them back into the fold. We actually found a recent convert who hadn't been to church in a long while and no one had any way to get a hold of her since she moved but we, through the grace of God, got into contact with her, met up with her, and she was able to come back to church with us! When one of the Sisters in the ward saw her there she told us she had been praying for that girl and her kids for the past month that they would be able to come back to church so it was an amazing testimony builder to be part of an answer to prayers! This is the last week of the transfer so we will be finishing off strong and ending the transfer on a continued high note. Something that I've started doing is I'm reading two chapters of the Book of Mormon each day and marking every reference to the Savior in red. I would admonish anyone who is reading this (yes that means you) to start making it a habit to read at least a chapter of the Book of Mormon and witness the power it will bring into your life and see the knowledge you will gain and your testimony strengthened. Please utilize this wonderful tool that we've been given.. it's at our fingertips.. now let's use it :) I love you so much!! Have a wonderful week everyone!! By the way... I'm no longer a teenager ;) Woot woot!! #hangloose? #party #iamgettingbetteratspreadingbutter #practicemakesperfect
Love,
Elder Conner Gunnoe

HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY ELDER CONNER GUNNOE

Email received January 5, 2015

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!! 2015 is here!! What an exciting time this is to be able to reflect on the wonderful year of 2014 and recognize the Lord's hand in my life and see what He has in store for me in 2015. We had an amazing week this past week and it was very eventful and revelatory. P-day we did our usual emailing and a bit of shopping but we mostly cleaned the downstairs apartment which we moved out of (so that it could be ready for a new tenant asap) and then organized our apartment and getting settled in. Something really awesome we've started is our 8pm appointments during the week. So winter time here in the Midwest is complicated because it gets dark around 5. With it being cold out it's hard to be running around doing work and with that, we find ourselves scrambling around the 8 o'clock hour to be obedient by staying out and working. but that's hard to do when we can't find anything to do. So something that we've started doing is filling up our 8 o'clock hour with effective lessons with members. So Monday nights we are going to Derek and Honesty's to read through and discuss Jesus the Christ with them. On Tuesday nights we are going to the Hughes' to read through and discuss the Doctrine and Covenants with them. On Thursday nights we are going over to the Temple's to read through and discuss Preach My Gospel with their older kids who are preparing to serve missions. On Friday nights we will be reading through and discussing the Book of Mormon with Brother Stover. On Sunday nights we meet with the Cooks to bring them the sacrament :) So we're making the least effective time of the day as effective as possible and as time goes on we will work on having investigators to some of these discussions :) #revelation! So for New Years Eve we had to come in at 630 pm and we weren't supposed to go back out until 3 pm new years day.. One might ask why we were "stuck" in the apartment for so long. So we were given a pack of statements and direction from President and Sister Porter of things to do during this time in the apartment. It started with cleaning and then the revelation started to pour down. We had some talks and scriptures and questions to read and ponder and we set a vision for ourselves not only for this year but of who we want to be when we're 50, what we want our life to be like, what we want our marriage and family to be like and how we can achieve those things! It was an amazing experience :) So the New Year started and we got to work. We were able to teach 10 lessons on Saturday and after having 3 investigators at church we taught 7 more lessons on Sunday, finding 4 new and seeing the fruits of fasting and prayer!! #God'sgraceinourliveswasmanifest We taught 31 lessons this past week and it was a good mixture of member present/member/investigator/less active recent convert lessons :) So this was an amazing week :) Elder Berrett and I texted President Porter and let him know that we came to the conclusion (after companionship inventory) that we work really well together so we won't be able to make it to transfer meeting this time around ;) he got a kick out of that :) We are looking forward to having another amazing week and finishing these last 2 weeks of the transfer off strong!! I love you!!! Happy New Year!!! :) <3

Elder Conner Levi Gunnoe

Email received December 29, 2014

Wow what an amazing Christmas week that was! Despite it being the Christmas season and everyone being busy with family and errands we were still able to get around to see quite a few people! We saw a couple of our investigators before Christmas and then on Christmas eve and Christmas day we saw some members and we were fed some amazing food and had a wonderful time getting to know some more of the members :) Wednesday we still had District meeting which went really well :) I decided to lighten the mood by starting off the meeting watching the District meeting movie that the mission put together with the Shoulder Devil video in it.. so funny :) Shoulder Devil loves his Snowflake ;) (inside joke) But then in the rest of district meeting we talked a lot about companionship unity and the important role it plays in the work. It went really well :) Christmas eve we had dinner with Sister McFarren and a lot of her family and it was awesome getting to know a lot of them and talking about the gospel and the way it has impacted our lives and sharing with each other what "gift" we will give to the Savior in this coming year as a birthday gift (awesome tradition I'm going to keep going in our family) :) It was awesome this week to be able to move upstairs into the new apartment! It's a much better fit for us and it's a good change :) Our investigators were awesome this week! A couple of them committed themselves to come to church.. One was last minute mandated to work this Sunday and he told his work he would grin and bear it this week but if they mandated another Sunday he said he's going to church.. he's putting God first in his life which is amazing to see :) Something that we talked about on Sunday in Priesthood was Elder Scott's talk from conference and we focused on the 4 things that he says will improve the quality of our lives and that is 1: Prayer 2: Reading 3: Family Home Evening and 4: Temple Attendance. I have seen all of these make a true difference in the lives of those we work with. Something I emphasized was the importance of the Book of Mormon in someone's conversion. If someone is rooted in the Book of Mormon than they will have a sure foundation to go off of and they will have the Spirit it brings constantly in their life. Temple attendance is very important as well and I can't wait to regularly attend the temple when I get home. I have seen the difference in my life when I am not able to attend the temple for a period of time. I know of the power that rests in the House of the Lord and I can't wait to draw off of it constantly for the rest of my life. I can't believe it's 2015 already!! Time is flying by so quickly and I only have a short 6 months left. I'm so grateful for this opportunity I have to serve the Lord in this Mission and I look forward to what He has in store for me after I finish serving Him full time. I Love you!!! Have a wonderful week!! #Redsweatersarethebest #Lifeisgood #Peace :)

Elder G