February 25, 2013

It's transfers!  And Elder Palmer is going to go away........  He's going to go train again in Medford.  My new companion's name is Elder Tandy-Trammel.  I haven't met him yet though, that will happen at 1:30.  I'll be staying in Salem.  Transfers are happy and sad.  Exciting and scary.  Yeah.

Answers to questions from Mom:

I'm great!  I did have a good week!

The new missions will be created in July sometime and whoever is in the Oregon Salem Mission boundaries  at that point will remain in that mission.  It will probably take from both the Portland and Eugene missions because Salem is split up between those.  It would be weird to start out in the Oregon Eugene and finish in the Oregon Salem but it's not that uncommon.  I would miss President Young, but I love Salem and the Salem mission's initials will spell OSM -> awesome which would be kind of cool....

The cello in the picture belongs to a ward member.  Salem is pretty much the most musical place ever which I hear is because of the phenomenal music program at Sprague Highschool.  Last night Elder Palmer had his cello and I had borrowed a violin and we played hymns for an old guy in the ward.  then we went over to Joel's house so he could play his viola with us and we jammed for a while.  Yeah that was in our apartment which was recently inspected and we were informed that it was terrible! > x <  We had actually cleaned it up a lot but missionaries have been living in that apartment for a loooooong time and it's really hard to get the dirt out of all the corners and the people inspecting the apartment were super strict.

Richard who found the burned B o M is currently being hard to contact but even if he doesn't continue the lessons right now he had contact with the restored gospel and hopefully he'll be drawn back to it soon.

My area is quite large but we spend most of our time in a very small suburban portion where everyone lives.  We had gone tracting in the far reaches when I took that picture.  Most of the mountains are short but there's the occasional really tall one like Mt. Hood and Mt. Angel and there's another one that I can't remember.  I think they may be volcanoes.  You should find that out for me.  The frosty pics are actually outside of my area.  We were doing a service project with some other elders.

The work is coming great!  We've been having problems helping people make and keep commitments but we are teaching people.  MIRACLE OF THE WEEK:  Do you remember Ryan?  Well one miracle, the last time we saw him he told us he had stopped drinking.  We haven't even taught him the Word of Wisdom!  Cha-ching!  But then we hadn't seen him for quite a while when we stopped by and his teenage daughter answered the door.  She told us he wasn't home and we talked about his schedule for a bit.  Then out of nowhere she said, "Actually I've been wanting to talk to you guys too.  My best friend from Colorado gave me a Book of Mormon, I'm halfway through first Nephi and I have some questions."  We were somewhat blown away and we eagerly agreed to start teaching her along with her dad.  We haven't taught them yet but she's going to be way easier to keep in contact with than Ryan so hopefully that will start soon.  Her name is Hyatt.  We've taught the Ridderbusches two dog-walking lessons now-not lessons on how to walk their dogs but gospel lessons while walking with them with their dogs-and they're going great.  They're making small changes in their lives that are helping them to come back to the Gospel.  Meeting with them has really reminded me that we all need to continue to re-apply gospel principles in our lives and rediscover our testimonies again and again.  That's why we go to church every week and why we read the scriptures over and over.  Because we all need to constantly be reminded to improve ourselves.  So we keep track of how many lessons we teach, specifically the number of lessons taught to investigators with a member present, other lessons taught to investigators, and lessons taught to less-actives and recent converts.  All those combined from last week were the highest weekly numbers we've had.  Yay.

Getting cd's approved is quite easy.  My call packet did say only MOTAB and EFY but all you have to do is call up Sis. Young and say hey, can I listen to this?  And she'll say, is it uplifting?  And I'll say, yes, and she'll say, ok.  I know Limbs and Branches has good Christian values but it can't be as rocking as the Switchfoot stuff.  I also don't want music that teaches false doctrines.  We've been listening to a lot of terrible mormon 80's music that Elder Palmer's mom sent him.  And you know EFY music it's kind of pop musical so it's not that it needs to be motab or classical, what really matters is if you think it's "consistent with the sacred spirit of my calling" (paraphrased from the Missionary Handbook pg. 25)