Bienvenidos!

It's Moments with Missionaries with Elder Willis and Elder Cochenour

Sorry for the short email last week, we had hardly enough time for ourselves.

We went around preparing for the new transfer, Elder Robar was saying goodbye to some of the members and whatnot. 

An Advertisement We Made for Facebook

So my new companion is Elder Cochenour. (pronounced Coke-an- hour ). Boy he has been around. He was first called to serve in the Mexico City Mission. Already I have heard many story's of the crazy things he would do with the other missionaries over there. He has also told me of the many differences between our mission and his old mission. The first and foremost difference is the temperature and mode of transportation, but it all ultimately boils down to the rules we live by.

Apparently we have a very strict mission, at least compared to my companion's mission. 

We are starting to proselyte outside, but we can't openly chase or follow people, we just need to put ourselves in situations where we would just happen to talk with people. We also have a limit on the amount of people we can talk to or visit outside. So we have to chose our 10 people wisely. The part that we don't like is that it applies to both members and people we teach, so if we are wise, we will only visit those we are trying to teach so we can make the most progress in the work.

My companions pass time.

Things are looking up, my companion and I are still doing Moments with Missionaries (it's on our Facebook pages  https://www.facebook.com/groups/3383825424985743/ of you don't know what it is). My last companion is still doing Moments with Missionaries too, and we basically have it in such a way that we post one live each night except Saturday, so don't forget to tune in. 

Our Zone kickoff,
we had to resort to extreme measures

Today we were able to have our first district P-day, so we are all exited to have actual human contact this week. We also have whips, they are real fun.

The whip, it's really fun, but sometimes painful

We play "what's cracking",
it's where we must make the whip crack,
if you can you are Crack-a-lacking".

It's about time that I go, but here 

are some pictures for y'all to enjoy. Sorry I have mostly been taking videos lately, so there aren't many pictures.

Phases - Both In and Out

We as a mission have been going through a degree of phases. 

(Sorry, there are no captions for the pictures this week - you'll have to imagine your own.)

For instance, us missionaries in Idaho have just hit phase 2 of the Quarantine and can now be in groups of 10 or less. However this does not stop anyone we have been seeing out in the streets lately. For instance, the other day we were driving to a service opportunity and we saw about 30 older ladies doing little workout session in a closed high school parking lot. (It was a strange sight to behold).

Another phase we are going through right now would be our Facebook pages.

Phase one. We establish our Facebook pages.

We try and do all we can to build up our following and a group of people to see our posts. 

Phase 2. We start using advertising! We haven't gotten the chance to use any yet because our page following is not great enough.

But soon we will be there. 

Transfers this week.  Elder Robar is transferring out to Washington. and I am getting a new companion.  Not sure what is going to happen to our "Moments with Missionaries" page.

Sorry I don't have much time at this point. 

We have lots to get to.

The First Wave

May the 4th dress ups. 
Pretty cool, just saw the while working and had to get a picture

Last week I spoke about how the mission will soon be flooded with more missionaries than we can handle. That very day we got 17 more missionaries. And next week it will happen again and who knows when it happens after that. We are going to be overwhelmed! 

Wow things are going great. 

We have been experimenting on some of the lessons we have been having with the members. 

One of the things we have been trying are Role plays. We try to teach the members how to share the gospel with their friends. Each time we challenge them to find us one person to teach before the week is done. So far we have not had any success, but soon we hope we will start getting referrals from the members.

There is this new inspirational message the church has made. It is about 15 minutes and is very symbolic. There is a message about not being complacent. There is one about listening to warnings, having faith and trusting in our Savior.

When you get the chance go ahead and watch it. It is a nice video. 

Went on another hike today.

Here is the link:

Better Off on My Own?

https://media2.ldscdn.org/assets/inspirational-messages/2019-inspirational-messages/2019-12-0100-better-off-on-my-own-720p-eng.mp4

Happy Mothers Day, by the way!

If I were older and had gone on my mission sooner yesterday would have been one of the 2 times I would get to call my family per year. I am very thankful for the opportunity to call my family twice a week now. The virus has made it unbearable for some missionaries, so our mission president lets us call on Mondays and Fridays.

Just one more week until transfers, but I fully expect to stay right here. It really depends on Heavenly Father though.

Ants again. 
They were huge - only this time they were in the church

I love you all. I hope you have been able to see my Facebook Lives "Moments with Missionaries". 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/3383825424985743/

If you have any suggestions of what we should try next please let us know! 

For now I have to go, but please enjoy these pictures that I have vicariously collected for my viewers. 

Operation Overlord: P-day

My companion and I pondering -
when we will have to go knocking on doors again

Well Well, how are y'all?

I'm doing fine. In fact, I think there are many things that are about to get better yet.

Let me fill you all in on the amount of missionaries we currently have in our mission. Keep in mind that once the virus kicked in, the majority of old missionaries were sent home along with any missionaries who were at risk. I also can't forget all missionaries serving in foreign missions were also sent home.

A good hike with the district and lots of mud. It was fun.

We currently have about 160 missionaries in the Washington Spokane mission. Before the virus we had about 220. This was at an all time high for our mission. Now all the missionaries who were serving outside of the country, once their Quarantine is over have a choice. They can either go right back out and serve in a different mission than they were originally called to on the US. Other missionaries can take the chance to be able to serve in their original missions.

Now here is the rub, for the next few weeks missionaries are being reassigned and will arrive to their new areas. Starting this week we will be receiving 71 new missionaries. Two weeks after that we will be receiving a similar number. We have no idea when this will stop, or what we will do once we exceed the max record. 

We did a Chalk walk, there was more at the end.
I will have to send the video to my family

But one thing is for certain, the work is going to take off and we are going to be struggling behind trying to stay with the expectations Heavenly Father has for us.

Hence the title, "Operation Overlord", the code name for the D-day invasion on Germany, except today is P-day, the start of the missionary invasion to the Spokane Washington mission. 

We have been doing lots of member lessons out here. Not too much to note, but we have been having a great time. 

There were a few times we had to bribe some youngsters to pray for us but we won't be making mistakes like that anymore. 

We started a Facebook Live. 

Our new facebook Live - "Moments With Missionaries"

The schedule is Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, all at 8:00 Pacific Standard Time.

We wanted to use a Facebook page to do it. But we were just informed that they want us to focus more on the page we already a part of. So we will still be streaming, but we will have to take down our page ☹️. That's okay though, we are still able to keep busy. 

How lots of the lessons we have over the phone go -
if there is no video chat

Sorry I don't have enough time to do more. We have a tight schedule and I am running behind, so enjoy these few pictures that I have and have a good week.