Another Great Week in Newberg!

The week here went really well. It flew by. I don't know what happened to it. On Monday, we went on a temple trip to the Portland Visitor's Center with Yana and our Ward Mission Leader and his wife. Yana really enjoyed the temple and learning more about the Book of Mormon. She committed to start reading it in English, even though that is harder for her. We sent her records over to the missionaries in the Netherlands, so they should be there waiting for her with a Bulgarian Book of Mormon when she gets back over there! It is pretty cool to see how the Gospel is truly being spread to all of the world. We are excited to keep in touch with Yana and see her progress from afar. 

Tuesday was Sister Francis' Baptism! That was really good! She is going to help a lot of people come into the Gospel. She has a light about her and she really treasures what she has been learning. The adversary was attacking her a lot this week with a bunch of stuff between her baptism and her confirmation on Sunday. But the confirmation yesterday was awesome! I am really grateful to have the opportunity to help in the small ways that we did. Elder Oswald and I feel like we didn't do anything to teach her, she was just prepared. 

We had some other miracles happen this week. We were able to find a ton of new investigators. It felt like the Lord was just putting them in our lap, even when we were having a rough day or things just seemed to be off. We also had an awesome lesson with Brandi and Jennifer. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and really focused on Our Life on Earth. We talked a lot about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how that is the plan for us to find success in this life and eternal life. We focused on the importance of being baptized by proper authority. Brandi was hesitant because she doesn't want to give her mistakes to Christ and make Him suffer for it. So we tried to help her understand that He already did suffer for us. We just have to have faith, repent, and be baptized to allow Him to take it from us. At the end of the lesson we invited them both to be baptized and they both said yes! We were really excited about that! One of the things that the mission is trying to work on is inviting people to make commitments by teaching the doctrine and promised blessings from the scriptures. So it has been really cool to see the progression of those that we are teaching as we apply that principle. There are so many good scriptures in the Book of Mormon and Bible that teach the doctrine and promised blessings of the commandments that Heavenly Father has asked us to keep. 

After that lesson with Brandi and Jennifer, Elder Bills and I got together to make transfer calls! It was my first time doing that. It was fun. For transfer news, Elder Bills is leaving.. He has 2 more transfers left, so he is being transferred to the Creekside ward in Salem. I am going to miss him a lot! He is one of the most humble people I have ever met. He is a really good example. And he taught me everything that goes with this assignment! The new Assistant that will be up here with me is Elder Patterson from Salem 1st! It is pretty cool to be able to be back with him! He is going to finish training Elder Greenwood and I am going to finish training Elder Oswald, but it will be fun to be living with him again and be his part-time companion for this transfer. This next week will be really busy. There aren't any departing missionaries since they all left a month ago, so that will take some of the craziness out of the week. I am definitely a little nervous with Elder Bills leaving though. I am trying to make sure I know everything that I am supposed to do so that everything goes smoothly. It will be fun though. 

I had an opportunity to talk yesterday in Sacrament. I talked about conversion. It went well I think. I was pretty nervous for it, but after I got up there the Spirit really just guided what I said, so that was awesome. I am grateful for the gift of the Spirit to help us out. By the way, you can tell Gramps that I have shared his basketball story in a lot of the talks I have given in Sacrament out here and it is always appreciated..