Okay so this week was pretty good. We had a couple cool things happen this week; we got 4 new investigators, we had a baptism and we got to help at the special Olympics. There have been a lot of fun parts to this week but also things have just been weird for me lately. I'll start with the baptism!

So Shawn Gilberts got baptized yesterday and it was awesome! He was found the week before I got to Eugene and I have been able to teach him for almost 3 months with elder Falatea. He is such a cool guy and it was so awesome to see him get baptized! Elder Falatea baptized him and I will be confirming him next week in sacrament! It will be my first time so I'm kind of nervous but it will be awesome. He has come so far though and gone through so many trials so it is just so awesome to see him take this step!

So we also got to volunteer for the special Olympics here in Eugene! It was super fun, we got to help and play in the bocce ball event. Those guys and girls competing are so funny and cute! We got to play against them also because certain teams didn't make it which was super funny and cool! We played like 10-15 games and we only won 2 of them lol lol. Yes I know that is probably not something to be prod of but they were pretty good hahah. And I actually got sunburnt! It was awesome! I've gotten so white these past 3 months so it was awesome to get all that sun lol!

We got 4 new investigators this week which was super cool! It's been a struggle to get solid new investigators lately so those 4 are awesome!

Anyway, it's way weird to be out here as a missionary. Like it's super weird and I knew it would be but dang I always think about it and it weirds me out. I'm still not completely used to the amount of rules there are (more than you could ever remember) and they add more on a regular basis lol. Like dang this life is tough for me sometimes not even going to sugar coat it. Everyday can be a serious challenge because it seems like they expect you to be pretty close to perfect and it is super difficult. There is a lot that I miss but really the reward outweighs the sacrifice for sure. 

I hope everyone is doing well. I miss you all and I hope everyone has an amazing 4th of July! Make it a good week. I love you guys and the church is true!

So this week has been pretty solid! We have a lot going on and a lot has happened. Well I'll start with how our investigators are doing.

Shawn is a guy we have been working with the entire time I've been here. They found him just before I came in and he is getting baptized this Sunday! He had his interview this last Sunday and now he is completely ready! It is going to be so awesome to see him take that step because he has had a few things hold him back a little and now he will be accomplishing this goal!

One of our other solid investigators, Marie, has dropped us like a hot potato.!! Straight was depressed about that. She was doing so good, asking about baptism and came to church and then dropped us like that. It sucked super bad but on the bright side we found 4 new investigators this week which isn't bad!

Also we have been meeting with Brandon and Kelley. They broke up but are kind of together but kinda not. Hopefully they will be moving along soon!

We have A LOT of people to meet with this upcoming week! We had about 15 lessons last week and hopefully we will have more this week.

But anyway, I've been pretty good. I'm almost done with training, July 4th is transfers and I will be done with training! I am pretty excited about that because the time seems to be going so slow. Everyone says their mission is flying by but dang mine isn't at all. It's been three months and it feels like a year lol. But I'm sure it will get better. There are a lot more challenges that come with a mission than I realized! But there's a lot of fun things too!

A couple days ago elder provostgard came back (he went home last transfer) to visit and we went out to lunch with him and a couple of YSA kids and more elders. It can be cool to just hang out with peeps sometimes  since we don't have much time for that ever! We have gone on splits with first ward quite a few times this week also and  it's usually pretty fun.

We had a zone conference this week also. Elder Johnson of the seventy came and talked about who God is and repentance. It was good but it was also four hours!!  Sometimes its  hard to get into talks and stuff since the MTC lol. It was the freakin best place ever and I learned so much more there than I ever have so I try to make the conferences and talks like that but sometimes it's difficult.

On a good note, I have got my workout schedule pretty down and I'm getting ripped...... Lol jk but it is nice to spend time doing that everyday!

Anyway, everything else has been good besides missing the heat but I'll get over it! I miss and love everyone and appreciate the emails and letters! Stay beautiful everyone and the church is true!

This week has been a long one! We started off the week by getting elder Cronin with us for 3 days because of an emergency transfer. He's super tight and he's the one that took me out the first night I got here. So a lot of this week was taken up with stuff other than proselyting. It was super sweet having him with us.

We went out to lunch and dinner with a couple peeps from the YSA ward a couple days this week also. We also had interviews this week too and that took almost an entire day but it was super good. My interview was pretty short and simple. It's probably better than having a long one lol.

But anyway, as for our investigators, Shawn is doing super well and he came to church yesterday! His date is on the 25th so I'm super stoked for him!

We didn't get to meet with Marie because of interviews but she came to church last Sunday so that's a really good sign!

We have a couple new investigators and quite a bunch of potentials that seem really solid. Finding has been the thing president Russell has been focusing on the most. Our goal for our mission is to get 352 new investigators this month so that is quite the goal and we are trying hard.

It was kind of cool, we went on splits the other day and I was with elder jerrard and we were tracting in our area when we ran into this lady Patty. Patty is a Jehovah's Witness and she was very set that she found the truth in that church haha. So I started asking her some questions and she almost instantly saw how those beliefs didn't make sense. We introduced the plan of salvation to her and she said she would take the pamphlet, read it and give us her questions. We got a return date Wednesday so that was cool!

Anyway, another thing is that we got a new ward mission leader!!!! I'm freakin so stoked! He is super tight! I can not wait to have some help! I seriously love some of the people in this ward though! Like dang I would be happy to stay in this area just because of some of the ward members!

Anyway again, this is bad but I am aware the NBA finals are on and elder Falatea and I  and a bunch of other elders like to watch that, so we have strategically placed ourselves in areas with tvs during the end of each game lol. It has backfired so far because the Warriors are winning but whatever. This next week I'm going to work on not strategically placing myself anymore. Haha. But this week has been alright and I'm glad to start another. I miss and love everyone. The church is true. And I'll email again next week

So this week has truly been an awesome one! There has been so much that was happening so it was a lot of fun. We started off the week which was Monday and we didn't get a Pday because we were going to the temple on Thursday. So Thursday became our Pday. So I emailed just a few days ago but the past few days have been the best of the week!

So the temple Thursday was awesome and I had an awesome experience come from that through the past couple days. I will go over that at the end of the email.

But anyway, Friday we always have training since I'm still on my second transfer and then we have district meeting after. Training is always super easy and district meeting is always super boring. But this week was awesome. District meeting is always taught by the district leader and that's elder jerrrard who is 20 months out and he is a super smart kid. This week he did such a good job. I felt the spirit so strong and it was exactly what I needed to hear. At the end he shared elder Hollands talk from this last general conference titled, "tomorrow the lord will do wonders among you" it was exactly what I needed to hear and it is such a good talk. I learned so much more from listening a second time.

After district meeting we decided to go on exchanges and I went with elder jerrrard.  He's really a funny kid, super smart, extremely obedient and talks a bunch haha. A lot of elders don't wanna go with him  because he is like obedient to the exact everything, but I thought it was super refreshing haha. I mean I try to do my best. And a lot of elders around are pretty decent when it comes to obedience but he takes it to the next level. It was cool to see how happy he was trying to follow the rules exactly. They do say obedience brings blessings, exact obedience brings miracles. And it was true. We went to go to an investigators house but he was going over to his neighbors house as we were walking up the street. We said hi but in an attempt to not make it awkward while he was with some neighbors we just kept walking and decided to tract the end of his street instead of the street we previously chose. We tracted into a young couple who was super interested. (And by the way we stayed in my area so this is the first time I have led the area and jerrrard loves to talk except for at door steps so I got to do all the talking.) They had so many questions. We went over the Book of Mormon, the restoration and almost the entire plan of salvation. When I asked them what they thought and were feeling after all of that they literally said, "it feels true. If there is anything that's true I think that would be it." And I about freakin hugged them. Anyway, we are going to try to set something up with them soon, it's finals for them so it's a busy time.

Then Saturday, it was a pretty normal day besides having stake conference. Elder Dube came from the 70 and he is from Zimbabwe which is super cool because we have a recent convert who moved from there a couple years ago so they were able to talk. But he talked Saturday night and it was such an amazing talk! Like you could feel the spirit so strong and it was one of those times where you sit there and you think to yourself, "the church is freakin true!" One thing he said that I thought was really awesome was never give out a closed Book of Mormon. I've really thought about that because a lot of the time we give people books of Mormon and we tell them to read parts of the introduction which is good, but there is so much more in there to use that could catch people's interests. So one thing I'm working on is knowing the Book of Mormon stories better so that I can give people stuff to read specifically for them at the time.

Sunday was also good with church and also we tracted for several hours in the humid heat and found a super good new investigator. It has just been going well.

Anyway, for the experience I had from the temple--so recently I have been not so much questioning my faith but wanting something to really help me feel the spirit and get that feeling like I had in the MTC again. I felt like I should pray about that when we went to the temple so I prayed and asked for some help or an experience or anything to just help me feel the spirit super strong. So literally the day after, we have the district meeting and it was a straight up answer to my prayer. Then on Saturday, elder Dube spoke and it was a freakin answer again. It was crazy, I asked and literally it took a day and I got a crazy answer. Well anyway, that was pretty much my last couple days. Sorry this one is like completely about me and not much about investigators or Oregon haha. But I love and miss you all! Stay safe and remember the church is true guys!!

Stay solid

Evidently they were having a Joseph Smith moment! I'm pretty sure Joseph didn't have an ipad though.

What is up everyone!? So this past week and a half since I last wrote has been a pretty long stretch. We have our Pday today (Thursday) because we went to the temple today. Going to the Portland temple takes almost two hours to get there from where we are in Eugene so it has been a long morning. I'm writing this as we are on our way back home and we are in dead stop traffic so we are pretty much not going to have a Pday. The temple was pretty cool though and the Portland temple is beautiful. I'll put some pictures at the end of the email. I have a bunch to do today and not much time to do it so that will be fun when we get home haha.
But anyway, this past week and a half has been real interesting. Every month we are given 1000 miles for our car and this last month we were docked 100 miles because the zone went over the month before. So from about the 24th until the 31st we didn't have a car and that made things quite difficult. We have a large area and my companion never bought a bike so we got to walk EVERYWHERE. It was good in some ways but very not good in many ways. We have quite a few lesson appointments each week and many of them are 20 minutes or more by car so walking to and from them took a large part of our days. I felt super inefficient and it could be frustrating sometimes only being able to do a couple things a day compared to how we can usually get quite a bit done haha. But I did get some good exercise in and we got to talk to a few people on our way to and from appointments.
As for some of the things we did this week and how our investigators are doing, there isn't much that's super exciting but we have done A LOT of service haha. We normally do service 3-4 days a weekish and this past week and a half we probably did like 20 hours or a little more than that. We got to help at a marathon and do a good amount of yard work as well as work at warehouses and homeless shelter type places. It can be pretty fun but it is usually tiring! We also were given another service opportunity that was way out on the outside of west Eugene and us and 4 other elders were asked to do it. So since all of us were out of miles we rode our bikes a little less than 8 miles each way to paint trash cans. It was quite the freakin experience. My butt hurt from riding that far and my bike broke and it's the second time I've used it lol.

But on another note, our investigators are doing pretty well. Shawn is still set to be baptized in June and Marie is super close to being set! Also, we have started teaching Brandon and Kelley regularly again! I'm glad they got over being mad at us about the law of chastity, but we will have to go back over that with them at some point! We have a good amount of investigators and most of them are suuuper questioning which is good but also super challenging. They ask questions that I've never even thought of in my 18 years haha. Everybody said Eugene is a hard place to do missionary work and boy is that true. Everybody is either "already saved" or doesn't give a crap about religion.

I guess a couple of other random things that have been going on; Darryl's (who we baptized the other week),  daughter and son in law who were inactive have started coming back to church and now they should be going to the temple to get their endowments and to get sealed soon! And we will be able to go with them! I'm super super excited for them! Another thing is the people here are crazy about Bernie sanders and wow they hate trump hahahaha. Well there are the few that LOVE trump but it's pretty funny because everyone tries to talk politics to us and we just turn it into gospel talk hahaha. But anyway, that's enough for this time. You're going to enjoy the pictures and video though! Love you guys!

Portland Temple

View From Their Apartment Balcony