Loving Newberg

The week was really good. It was insanely busy, but it was really fun. It's crazy to me that we were in Bend a week ago. It felt like so much longer than that. It was really good to be able to go over there for Zone Conference. On the drive over, Elder Bills and I were trying to prepare a role play that we had to do as part of the meeting. We were role playing how to extend the invitation of inviting someone to church using scriptures to teach the doctrine and promised blessings of church attendance. We were really struggling with how we wanted to do it. For some reason it just didn't feel right. We eventually felt like we needed to change the invitation to baptism. After we made that determination, the role play came much quicker. We were able to find doctrine in the scriptures and promised blessings in the scriptures that supported exactly what we wanted to do. The next day, as we were in the meeting, we realized that we were assigned to role play the invitation to be baptized! It was a pretty huge tender mercy that the Spirit helped guide us to the correct invitation as we were practicing on the car ride over. 

Bend was really smokey! There are a lot of fires over there right now, so the air was thick with smoke. It was fun to be on that side of the mountains again though. It reminds me so much of Northern Arizona! After Zone Conference, we went on an exchange until the next morning. I stayed in Bend with Elder Donaldson (he went to Mountain View) and his trainee Elder Rasmussen. It was a lot of fun. They are great missionaries. It is really cool to see how prepared the missionaries that are coming out into the field are. 

Thursday was MLC! It was a busy day, but a lot of fun. Friday was another Zone Conference. This was for our zone and the neighboring zone. It went really well too! Toward the end of the meeting, President started talking a bunch about goals. It was totally by the Spirit and it was really cool to be able to hear and listen to. The Zone Conferences have been mainly about teaching skills. President and Sister Tateoka are training about using the scriptures to teach the doctrine and promised blessings of the invitations that we extend to people. Elder Packer said that true doctrine, understood correctly, will change behavior quicker than a study of behavior can change behavior. I think it is really cool and it has been awesome to learn about. Elder Bills and I have been training on how to begin teaching. It has gone well too. We have two more zone conferences this week. It should be fun. 

The weekend was really good. Elder Oswald and I have been seeing a lot of miracles. On Saturday, we had a couple lessons planned that evening. We prepared a really solid lesson plan for this group of teenagers. It was mainly about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and how He can strengthen us through our trials. As we were walking to that lesson at the park, we saw a girl on her phone. We felt prompted to give her a picture of Christ and ask, "when can we come back to talk?" She said, surprisingly, in an hour! So we proceeded to the park. The kids that we prepared that lesson for were not there. But as we went back and had that lesson with that girl, we realized that the lesson that we prepared for the other kids, was in reality made for River! It had exactly everything she needed to hear. She saw us showing up to see her as a sign that God was reaching out to her. We are going back tonight to teach the Restoration.

We also met a guy, Brother Chuck, who is an interesting fellow. He is a funny guy but seems like he wants to change. He said that he would prepare to be baptized in August, so we are excited to try and work toward that with him. The work is going well here. We are finding a lot of people. Heavenly Father is blessing us with people to teach. It has been a struggle to help these people actually progress. But we found a bunch of new investigators this week and are excited about all of them. Things are starting to pick up! One thing that has been helping us is we are making a really concerted effort to treasure up the word throughout the day. We are picking one principle from the lessons, such as God is Our Loving Heavenly Father, and keeping all of our conversation focused on that throughout the day and trying to practice teaching the principle very simply. It has helped both of us a lot. I am having a blast here in Newberg! I am hoping that Elder Oswald and I will stay together to finish his training next transfer!