Training New Missionary

Elder Holt is being transferred to Lebanon to be a District Leader out there. He’s going to do really good at that. I’ll be training a new missionary so I will get him from Newberg on Thursday. It will be good. 

  

The Book of Mormon study class is going really well! We had almost twice as many people there this week and it was really successful. A lot of investigators came and they really enjoyed it. We are excited to keep doing that moving forward. 

The week here was good. I don’t have a ton of time to write today because we are busy packing up Elder Holt and everything. But the week went great. We met a really cool guy named Jason. He has battled some mental health issues for a lot of his life, so that has kept him from progressing much spiritually. On the day of our lesson, we talked to him on the phone to confirm and he didn’t want to meet any more because he read the intro to the Book of Mormon and didn’t really think it was for him. Elder Holt did a great job of talking to him and allowing the Spirit to work with him and eventually Jason reschedule for the next day. At that lesson, we realized how prepared Jason was! He told us that he wanted a moral compass for his life and he wanted to quit smoking and drinking coffee! At that lesson, we talked about baptism and he accepted the invitation to be baptized! Then in the next lesson he said, “So essentially in Mormonism you believe that your church is Christ’s original church?” That was pretty cool to hear! He’s probably the fastest I have seen someone understand that principle. He came to church on Sunday and had a good time. We had another investigator there on Sunday as well for the first time and he really enjoyed it too. It’s been fun here with Elder Holt!

 

Lessons Learned

The week went pretty well. It went by really quickly. The trip to Newberg and the mission tour was really good! Elder Whiting was a really good man and he taught us a lot. I learned a lot from what he taught and I’m grateful for the chance to have been there and learn. I think I learned the most, however, during a few minutes that President instructed us. President told a story that I have heard him tell a few times, but I learned a few more things from it this time. He told a story of when he was sick right before a Stake Presidency Meeting. Sister Tateoka had to take him to the hospital and he was in pretty intense pain, and he cried out to Christ just as Alma the Younger did when he saw the angel. It stuck with me a lot this week. I was thinking about Alma the Younger and what he said about his experience. He said that his mind caught hold of the thought (the thought being that of Jesus Christ coming to atone for the sins of the world), and that is what led to his joy and peace. 

Church yesterday was really good. We had a really good ward council and a great Sacrament Meeting. I definitely felt edified from church. I learned a lesson in ward Council. We are working on the Melchizedek Priesthood Rescue. We have a bunch of names, but were going to start with the first three. The third name on the list was a name that a lot of people thought had moved and wasn’t in our ward anymore, so we skipped to the fourth. Well... when church started, guess who showed up to church with his family? The third man on the list! His kids are not members, and after Sacrament, the mom asked if we could start teaching the kids the lessons. So we were excited about that!

On Saturday, we had a great experience doing a Book of Mormon study class. This was our first class. There were about 10 of us there. But it was great! At first, one of our investigators got sort of contentious. He sort of felt that God was both good and evil, but as we read in 2 Nephi 2, his heart softened and he totally changed his outlook! That was pretty cool to see. 

Mother's Day

We were all able to Skype with Jacob yesterday! It was great "being together" and seeing his smiling face. Things are going well as he finishes his last three months in Oregon!

The week here in general was good. It was kind of a slow week. We had an exchange this week with the Zone Leaders, which went really well. I was with Elder McElreath. 

When he first came into the mission, I was his Zone Leader in Keizer. He has come a long way. He is very loving and so it was good to be with him and be able to talk with him. Our exchange was really good. We had a really powerful lesson when we first started the exchange. We were teaching one of their investigators who has been struggling off and on but overall is doing well. The members in the ward did a really good job at the lesson bearing testimony and inviting the Spirit. We invited her to be baptized, but she didn’t feel like she could. Then the Spirit helped us remember a scripture to share with her and it was the perfect scripture for her. Her whole demeanor changed and she accepted the invitation. That was pretty cool! 

This week we are heading out to Newberg on Thursday for a mission tour. Elder Whiting of the 70 is coming to visit the mission. It will be really good to be able to participate in that. It will be fun being in Newberg as well. 

Happy Birthday with a Baptism

The baptism went really well! There was a really good turn out from the ward once again. Angelica asked a couple of the young women to be the speakers and they did awesome. The next person that we were working towards baptism with, Crystil's neighbor, hit some major stumbling blocks and it has really halted her from progressing towards that. But the miracle is that she attended Angelica's baptism because she wanted to support her! So it was awesome that she was able to be there to hear the young women give simple and sincere talks. And the Sister Missionaries, during the interlude time after the Baptism while Angelica and Elder Holt had to change, taught the Restoration and so that was really good for her to hear as well! 

Overall it was a great day. That whole family is doing so well and we are really excited for them. The rest of the week was pretty good. I don't remember a ton of what happened though. But overall it was good! We had an exchange with the Cascade Crest Elders, which was good. During the exchange, we were biking and saw someone far away so We went over to talk to them. They were getting in their car and weren't interested, but as We were about to leave, someone behind us starting talking to us. She is not a member, but her husband is and they have been taught off and on by some other Elders nearby. So we were able to have a good conversation with her ans encouraged her to start meeting with them again. I believe that the elders said that she came to church this week so that was good! We also had a great lesson this week with a less active sister that we are teaching. She has had such a strong desire to get on track and so it has been really great to see her progression. She has been to church three weeks in a row and is changing a lot! 

Brother Sauter from the ward brought Jake a cake and ice cream for his birthday on Saturday!

Follow His Promptings

The week here was good! We had a really good weekend. Crystil and Anthony were able to join the youth for the temple trip. They were able to do baptisms for the dead and have a really enjoyable experience. The Bishopric asked them to bear their testimonies about it on Sunday at church, so that was awesome to hear! Crystil is excited to continue taking her family back to the temple. Her daughter, Angelica, joined the youth as well. But since she hasn’t been baptized yet, she went to the visitors center and hung out with the visitors center Sisters. The Sisters there talked to her about a Baptismal date and invited her to pray about one. The Sisters were able to really connect with her and talk with her, which was great! She went to a tree on the temple grounds and prayed about a date and had a really cool experience! Her answer was that she should be baptized this upcoming Saturday! We are really excited for her. She has been doing really well and it is great to see her reach this point. 

We had a good week with lots of experiences. We had an exchange on Wednesday. During the exchange, we were driving back to our apartment in the morning to come back for lunch. As we were driving, we felt prompted to pull over and talk to someone. At first we didn’t do it, but then it stayed there, so we followed the prompting and talked with her. She turned out to be really cool and it was a great conversation. We were able to send her as a referral to the Sisters in the neighboring area. It was just another lesson that a) Heavenly Father is always aware of us and He will prompt others to do things to be of help to us. And b) that we need to always follow His promptings. At first we didn’t, but I’m grateful that we did. We just have to always learn to follow the first time it comes, which isn’t always easy! 

Great Things Happening

Things here are good with the work. It has been amazing to see the ways that our investigators are progressing. Ashley, who is Crystil's neighbor, is doing so good. She was able to make it to the full day at church for the first time this week and she had a really good time. The Spirit has been working with her so much. She has absolutely started to love reading the Book of Mormon and has been cruising through it so fast! We were able to read the Book of Mormon with her in a members home this week, and that was so good. That is something that can really help investigators, reading in members homes. We have really been focusing on reading the Book of Mormon as a mission recently, and it has helped a lot. It was really cool this week because the Relief Society in our ward threw a baby shower for Crystil's daughter and apparently it went extremely well. Crystil's daughter felt so loved and the sisters in the ward did such a good job at fellowshipping her. Crystil and Anthony are going to be going up to the Portland temple this week to do baptisms for the dead! The youth are going up for a temple trip, so it is going to be a great opportunity for them. Ashley and Angelica are also going to be going up with the youth and are going to be visiting the visitor's center while the rest of the them are doing baptisms. 

We had a cool miracle this week with one of the newer investigators that we are teaching. His name is Andrew. He has been having a rough week, so we went and visited him on Saturday. We had a really good conversation with him and invited him to church. He said that he would try to come to church, but wasn't sure. On Sunday morning, we received a text from him and he said that he was going to come! He showed up to church and stayed for Sacrament meeting and he really enjoyed it. The ward did a really good job at helping him feel loved and he said that he wanted to come back again. We were excited about that! 

Staying in High Desert

The week has been really good. We definitely saw a lot of miracles. Crystil was able to go to the temple visitors center this week with Anthony, so that was really good for them. We had a lesson this week with Crystil’s neighbor, Ashley. We did it at the church and had a church tour with them. It was really cool because Crystil, who has only been a member for about three weeks, was bearing a lot of testimony and helped out a lot. We showed a little video about the Relief society and Crystil said, “Oh it’s much better than that!” So it was really good experience for Ashley. She was really excited to come to church on Sunday, but then Sunday morning she messaged us saying that she had to help her mom with some car problems. We messaged her back saying that she could come late if she could make it. We got a text with about 5 minutes left in Gospel Principles saying that she was in the hallway! She went to relief society and had an awesome time! She is doing really well and is progressing towards baptism in May. 

We had a lesson this week that we were bringing a Priest with us to and when we were walking towards the mans apartment, we saw another guy and started talking to him. He invited us to come upstairs. He recently started attending another church because he is trying to get his life on track. We were able to teach him the Restoration really briefly and use the Book of Mormon and he said we could come back Wednesday. It was cool too because right as we were starting to talk about modern prophets, I saw that on their entertainment center they had a quote and the author of the quote was James E Faust! So we told him that he was a modern Apostle. So that was cool!

Elder Holt and I will both be staying here in High Desert for a third transfer. We are excited to be able to keep working together and to hopefully keep seeing more miracles. Elder Patterson is staying in Redmond, so I will be able to see him at the Zone Conference next month before he goes home. I’m excited for that. Next month our Zone Conference will be a mission tour with Elder Whiting of the 70. That will be good.