31 Aug 2025
VOLUME 13 – NUMBER 624
Ashton finishing up laundry room
For Dad's birthday, we renovated the laundry room. It took a total of four days to finally get it done, but we finished it on Saturday. It was really fun, and it looks amazing!
I did learn a valuable lesson and had to check my pride a little bit, haha. The last thing to finish the room was to put the hardware on the doors. Dad claimed it would be a two-hour project, which I thought was absurd. I was sure we could get it done in 20 minutes.
The top cabinets went smoothly, and I was confident. But when it came to the bottom shelves, I mismeasured and ended up spending over an hour fixing the problems I created. It took about an hour and a half, at least, to get them all on.
It was a valuable learning experience. Now I know how to avoid that mistake in the future—and that you should never bet against Dad when it comes to projects.
Newly renovated laundry room
Not much happened this week, I’ve been making sure to do personal study, and I’m doing pretty good in school except for math of course. Ellie, Charlie, and Ava came on the weekend. It’s always fun to be around nieces and nephews!
Also, Ashton decided that for Dad’s birthday we’d finish remodeling the laundry room. So over the past week, Troy, Ashton, Cougar, Dad and I worked tirelessly through the wee hours into the morning to finish the job. I’m really proud of the final product.
Ashton and Kai working on laundry room
I’ve been on the job hunt since graduation earlier this month. I’ve had a lot of interviews, second interviews, and have really been putting myself out there to find employment.
I finally accepted a job with Valley Behavioral Health in Salt Lake City. I’ll be working as a case manager for adults with severe mental illness. I don’t know all the details yet, but I start on the 16th, and I’m really looking forward to it.
With the decision to start work in Salt Lake, our family will need to move. We’re planning to move into the basement of the home in West Jordan, which is very exciting!
Owen on steps of Springville apartment
We were in West Jordan a handful of times this week—riding bikes, playing chess, and working on finalizing the renovations for the laundry room. I really enjoy having more people around us; it keeps me happy and motivated.
This year has been pretty wild. We’ve moved twice, I graduated, I switched jobs twice, Endia took a job working with Dorothy, we had a baby, and probably ten other things I’ve forgotten.
Whatever the case is, I’m hoping that this job and the move will bring a bit more consistency so we can start to get into a more natural routine. The last eight months have been a little chaotic.
Dad, Ashton, Cougar working on shelf
This week in seminary, we did a lot of “get to know each other” questions and activities, which were really fun. I really like my class! They’re easy to talk to, and pretty much everyone participates.
School is going pretty well. I’m ahead in all of my classes, and I have really good teachers. Overall, it’s been a normal week.
Laundry room ready to paint
I moved into my new apartment! I spent a lot of time cleaning it up. My room smelled super strongly of burnt dust, so I dedicated about six hours to cleaning and dusting my blinds. Luckily, it did the trick! It’s feeling more and more like my place as I get things cleaned and organized.
I also went to a bit of the Together in Christ YSA Conference with a few of my friends. On Friday, I showed up on time for the Piano Guys concert and Bishop Causse’s message. The Piano Guys’ performance was incredible.
Ellie and Charlie
On Saturday, I went home for a bit to do some shopping and hang out. In the afternoon, I returned to Provo on the Frontrunner and went to BYU’s first football game! I went with some friends, and we played a really easy team. We completely dominated the game, winning 69 to 0. There’s no comparison to being at a BYU football game.
Sunday was my first Sunday with my completely new ward. I’m glad I have this clean slate and the chance to get to know a lot more people. Afterwards, I went up to Salt Lake City with a couple of my friends for President Holland’s devotional. It was an amazing message, and I received some great insights and thoughts.
Caleb at football game with friends
School is going great right now! I’m already more than a quarter of the way done with all my classes, and I’m hoping to finish early.
School feels really easy right now, but that’s mostly because there aren’t a lot of projects or essays yet. Those tend to take me a long time since I don’t like writing essays. This semester, I’m going to try to finish them quickly so I don’t fall behind.
Monte and Elder Larson
Before we start, today marks my 100th day as a missionary! Time flies when you’re doing what’s right. Now...
Ladies and gentlemen! We have another episode in the soap opera of the mission! Laura and Jesús are getting MARRIED! I’m really scared to write that because I always seem to jinx it when I do. The good news is, they’re making progress toward getting baptized!
Speaking of that, after trying all week to have our pre-interview with them, we finally did on Sunday! Let’s freaking go! It was súper potente. They’ve both developed amazing testimonies of the Restoration of the Church and of Jesus Christ. They are so close—let’s just hope they follow through with the wedding so they can be baptized. Fingers crossed!
Monte and Elder Larson eating waffles
We also made a video for Emily about baptism (and for Minerva, to help remind her why she was baptized in the first place). We spent all week prepping, writing, making props, filming, recording voice-overs, and editing.
We don’t have a lot of spare time in our day, so we had to make do with what we had—but God helped us out a ton! (You can watch it on my Google Photos.) We’re planning to set a fecha with Emily this week, hopefully for the 13th of September.
MONTE’S PLAN OF SALVATION VIDEO
To watch this video, CLICK HERE.
Monte’s props for video
Estefanía and her boyfriend Royer are so potente! They are definitely going to get baptized. We’ve been meeting with them consistently, and it’s been amazing to see their testimonies grow. They love each other so much, and we hope they can get married as soon as possible.
We also talked to Estefanía about baptism (Royer had to leave early), and she has the desire! Let’s go! We’re going to do everything we can to help them grow closer to each other—and, even more importantly, closer to Jesus Christ.
The love you build for your friends while teaching is unreal. They truly become your friends, and you just want them to be happy.
Other than those things, the week sort of kicked us in the butt. But we have a plan to help us improve! As missionaries, we’re not going to be perfect all the time, but that’s why we have repentance. Through repentance, we can fix the things we’ve done wrong and become better missionaries—and better people.
New electronics shelf in laundry room
This week Jack Haymond got his mission call! He’s going to Dallas, Texas, and will be leaving on November 17.
On Sunday, Jack and I talked about going to the YSA Conference together. It’s a three-day event, so on Friday around 9:00am, we went to Salt Lake and started some of the activities. We walked around for a while and even got lost at one point trying to find where we needed to go. There were also some college sponsors there.
Then we got lunch and tried Mangonadas, which were really good! I hadn’t had one in forever, so it brought back some memories. After lunch, we did some service activities where they reuse grocery bags to make blankets and pillows. It was actually really cool how they turn something like garbage into something helpful.
Jack and Gloria at YSA conference
Later, there was a devotional. The Piano Guys came and performed for us, and one of the Seventy gave a talk. It was really cool seeing the Piano Guys perform in person! After the devotional, played some games, and met up with Ashley Rich, her friend, and Caleb.
That night, there were a few different dances—a Latin dance, a country line dance, and a general dance in the main room. We stayed and danced for about 30 minutes before heading out, because it was getting a little too crowded for us.
On Saturday, I went to the conference with Ashley and her friend. Jack couldn’t make it because he was receiving his endowment later in the day. We stayed in Salt Lake for a few hours, then headed up to Sandy for a concert. Andy Grammer and Needtobreathe performed—it was so fun and really cool seeing them live, especially Andy Grammer, since I love his music.
Gloria and Ashley Rich at station
We got pretty close to the stage, which was set up on the field. It was awesome being so close to the performers. The conference organizers gave out wristbands to about a hundred people, and we got some! The concert ended around 10:45pm, and we had to rush out to catch the train on time.
While we were riding, they announced that the last stop was at Fashion Place Mall, but our stop was Murray, two stations later. The train stopped at Fashion Place, and we ended up getting stuck there with some other people from the conference. Ashley and a few others ordered an Uber to head to the Murray Station and get their cars so they could come back and pick us up.
On Sunday, Jack and I went to the devotional at the Conference Center. Elder Holland gave the message, and it was really powerful—especially since he was speaking directly to all of us young single adults.
Gloria and Jack Haymond at devotional
I just want to thank Ashton, Cougar, Kai, and any of the rest of you that helped to renovate the laundry room. It was a couple weekends of hard work, but it looks beautiful now.
We’ve had holes in the laundry room walls for almost five years, and I believe that I you all hadn’t pitched in and helped out, we probably would have gone another five years before it got fixed. Thank you all!
As I mentioned last week, I finished up the river trip electronics box, and so this week I moved on to the next project—a huge mess in the Bunkhouse. This week I worked on re-organizing the Bunkhouse closet, including relocating our chest freezer to the closet. It took several days to sort through everything in there, and to put it all back together in a clean and organized way.
So what’s next? Well, the Bunkhouse and the Bunkhouse closet now look really nice, but just around the corner is a big pile of eight tubs of my personal history stuff that Mom “delivered” to me to go through. I’ve put this project off for years, and now it’s time to get things done!
Newly organized Bunkhosue closet