This week was a straight struggle!  

Monday we got here to Corvallis at about 6pm after driving for several hours. We were super tired and had no clue what was going on or where to go since both Elder Henley and I are new to the area.  On top of that, most of the zone is new and they dropped everyone off at the gas station and we were supposed to help everyone get where they were supposed to go but we were lost also.  lol  Eventually everyone found their apartment and we were able to get all their stuff there as well.  We were going to try and contact people that first night but they were having FHE at the building and they all wanted us to come do FHE with them so that's what we did.  haha

The next couple days were just super painful and long.  lol  So we have no people on date or progressing which means we have almost zero people to teach!  This was dead week because finals are next week so people are either going home or coming back so its almost impossible to find solid people.  But other than that, we've been doing super well.  

Elder Henley is a homie and we both love working with the young people.  The ward here is pretty cool and it's a super nice university.  It's been a little colder this week and rained off and on but we still managed to find 6 new people to teach.  We've talked to some cool people and shared some good messages so far, including to a group of sorority girls which was pretty entertaining!haha  Most people are pretty nice and seem willing to hear us out so that's always good.
Love you
Stay Solid

June 5 2017

This week was a great week!  On Tuesday we had a mission leadership conference which was super awesome because it was in Bandon!  It was so good to be back there and see the ocean and what not.  We had half of our meeting out on the beach so that was pretty tight!  I definitely enjoyed that a lot and they had some good teaching segments on being strong in spirit and being the watchmen over our fellow missionaries. 

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty normal days.  Friday we had district meeting which was good then after that we went to the Sharps for lunch and a fun little object lesson on miracles which was super cool.  It's always so good to have members like the Sharps that are super awesome and are always helping us.  We had several lessons on Friday too.  Maria is doing well still!  She is moving to Portland though which will be awesome as long as she goes to church!

Katherine is still doing awesome!  She was one that Elder Hatch and I baptized our second transfer together and she's only getting better and better. 

We had another lesson with Mike and Corey and they are doing so awesome--Getting closer and closer to baptism.  Dustin and his son are also doing well which is so awesome!  They both want to be baptized and are loving the lessons.  

Saturday was awesome because Sally was finally baptized!  It was so cool to see! She felt the spirit so strongly. Sunday I was able to confirm her and that was also super cool!  It was definitely a great end to my stay here in Grants Pass!  

It's been such a great experience to be around all these people and to have been able to teach them and watch them grow. 

I'm being transferred to Corvallis to work with the YSA ward at the University.  I'm whitewashing in the Elder Henley.  I think it'll be a lot of fun.  I'm looking forward to it!
Love you
Stay solid

Just a quick note because today is transfers.

I'm going to Corvallis to be a zone leader there and I'm whitewashing in with Elder Henley who is a new zone leader.  We are in the YSA ward on campus.  That's the big news.  Oh, and Sally was baptized last weekend and I confirmed her!

Love you 
Stay Solid

This week was quite the week.  

Tuesday we had another zone conference which Elder Ross and I had to teach.  We taught everyone on qualifying our investigators, which I felt went pretty well!  After the meeting, on the way back from Central Point, we were able to stop for food. While we were eating we were able to catch the Cavaliers come back and beat the Celtics which made the day even better.  haha

Wednesday we were able to teach several lessons.  We still have 5 people on date and they're doing really well!  We are teaching several more that could be on date soon as well.  Sally is doing awesome and will be baptized this upcoming week which will be awesome!  It will be the most awesome thing to see that before I leave this area.  

Friday we went up to Eugene to do exchanges for the day which is always not fun but I got through it and then on Saturday Boatnik started.  Boatnik is a huge festival in Grants Pass on Memorial Day weekend.  Its like a big parade and carnival where they have boat races on the river and tons of people attend.  Elder Ross and I also borrowed a tandem bike from the Sharps and rode it all around town during the celebration.  haha

Have a great Memorial Day.  Love You
Stay Solid

Elder Ross and I getting ready for Boatnik

                                          

This week there was some pretty cool stuff that went down.  First, we've budgeted our miles really well this month so we were able to go see all the people who live out in Narnia. 

Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with Sally!  She is super cool and I hope she sticks to her baptism date so I can make it before I get transferred. She should get dunked June 3rd so that will be dope!

Wednesday we drove out to all the middle of nowhere places to see a bunch of part member families.  

Friday we had a district meeting and then we drove down to Cave Junction to see some of the YSA people on the list we were given.  It's always good to go down there and then we can go to the border and I can go back home to California for a quick minute.  haha

The best part of this week was that I was able to go back down to Central Point to my last area to see the rest of the Seeley family get baptized!  Anna and Collin got baptized now which completes the family, other than their two 4 year old daughters!  It was so awesome to see and talk to them again.  It's great to see how far they've come from that night that Elder Clark and I tracted into them with our Christmas message.  They are super awesome and it's so cool to be able to be a part of the conversion of an entire family!

That night we also had a zone activity at the Sharps which was really cool.  The Sharps are awesome and they are always doing awesome stuff for us.  We were able to have several people come to church also which is always good.  Have a great week!
Love you
Stay Solid

This week was pretty good.  We had mission leadership council on Tuesday again which went pretty well.  It was good to see Elder Falatea and Elder Hatch again!  The training was focused only on being a leader so it was alright.  

This week we had some good lessons and we also found some new people to teach.  We've still had some lessons with Maria and she should be going to the temple really soon so that will be cool! 

We've been meeting with Ray and he's doing well.  He's still on date for June.

Ethan  is doing super super well!  His baptism will be the 20th, which is the day before his birthday so he is super excited!  

Dustin is still doing really well and he and his son went to the father and son campout!  His son is ten and we will probably be teaching him soon!  

Friday night we went downtown and started talking to a bunch of people and it was pretty successful!  It was going super well until the same anti Mormon people that I've talked to before kept following us around.  They kept trying to argue with us and give the people we had just taught all this anti material.  I got in a good discussion with one of the guys and it was pretty entertaining.  But he ended up getting angry and walking away, so it ended well. 

Sunday we were able to have 9 investigators at church which was super awesome!  It's the most I've ever had come to church in a week on my mission.  I feel like Elder Ross and I are doing well, now we just need to get the rest of our zone going.  They're not doing so well and I've been kind of stressed about it.  We've tried to help them but it doesn't seem to have worked so I just decided that we will start going to their areas everyday and working.  Maybe we can find some people for them to teach.  Hopefully this will help a lot because I'm not trying to have a sad last place zone!  So that's been my current struggle but I'm sure we'll get things picked back up in the Grants Pass Zone and I'm excited to see how much we can get done in the next few weeks before I leave.  
Stay Solid

This week was good!  Elder Ross is cool so we had some fun. Elder Johnson and Elder Mafi live right down the street from us so we're always having a good time.  On Tuesday Elder Ross had ZL training so he went to that and I went with Elder Westover who's in our zone.  

We've been meeting with Dustin on Tuesdays.  He wants us to teach his 11 year old son so he should be either coming to church next week or we will go over there to start teaching him!  So that's super awesome.  Dustin is improving so much even though he won't be able to be baptized for a while.  

Sally's baptism got moved back because she had to go out of town so hopefully this week we can set another date and she will be back to planning the program.  She's doing so well--all she has to do is get in the font!!  She said she definitely wants to get baptized before I leave so that would be awesome!

On Thursday we had a lesson with Ethan which was super cool!  He'll be planning his baptism this week since it's on the 13th.  It's so crazy to see him learn and grow and how prepared he is.  It makes me so happy to see how much he loves church and how he sees the beauty of it all.  It's awesome that he has the chance to serve a mission and share with others what he's learned!  He's one of the most awesome people I've worked with on my mission.

On Thursday we were on splits and I was with Elder Johnson.  I wanted to go and contact this person in our Area Book so we decided to just knock the whole street while we were there.  We came upon a guy named Ray who was outside pulling weeds.  I asked how he was doing as we were walking by and we almost kept on walking but I felt like it would be ridiculous to not talk to this guy about what we're out here to share so I just started to go into it.  He ends up telling us that he thinks the Book of Mormon is the word of God so we explained to him what that meant.  We set a return appointment for Saturday and he rode his bike to the park to meet us.  He said he wants to get baptized so we put him on date for June!  It was super cool!

The one difficult thing that happened this week, besides being out of miles, is that we met with Maria and she is having a hard time.  She went down to California to see her family and her grandma told her not to be involved with the church anymore.  Her grandma is the only one she really cares about so it was super rough on her!  We had a rough lesson and I really didn't know what to say to her other than to pray.  She had a crazy answer to her prayer and literally right after she prayed her grandma told her she was alright with her coming to church.  It was super awesome!

We have another week with a lot coming up so it should be fun!  Love you all
Stay Solid