I've Been Banished

I met my friend again -
Brother Wilding

We just got our transfer calls and it looks like my lucky streak is broken.

I usually spend three transfers in one area, and after only spending two transfers I get sent to the bottom of our mission. 

I say bottom because it is the southern most place we can serve in the Spokane Washington mission. 

I have been sent to Orofino. This area is in the Lewiston Zone, and also happens to be beyond the black stump, seriously we are in the middle of nowhere. But hey I can't complain, I have two great missionaries as my companions: Elder Tull is and Elder Staheli. 

Service at the Trail

Unfortunately, I can't take Moments with Missionaries with me, it needs to stay in my area, but if they don't have something set up down in the backwoods, I will see to it that we make one. Perhaps we can call it "The Daily Dose of Doctrine". Just brainstorming here. 

So this week lots has happened. 

A guy offered my companion a compound hunting bow for super cheap, and we went around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get it sent home. Mostly because the Elders we live with didn't want it in the home. 

We also helped the city and helped make a new trail over in Rathdrum. I was on stump duty, and all they gave me was a pick hammer and hoe. They didn't really have a good synergy and I worked way harder than necessary. All the while my companion had the pick-axe which is exactly what I needed, but hey I got the job done. There we saw lots of Huckleberries up there, but there were not yet ripe, so we didn't really enjoy them the way they were meant to be enjoyed. 

A lot of Food - unfortunately, we had to throw a lot out.

Yesterday a member who had been going through some really bad times signed up to feed us. Nothing too wild or crazy right? 

Well, she hadn't been to church for longer than 2 years, and she out of the blue asked to feed us. 

A Good Sunset

More Service - moving lots of dirt

She gave us not one, not two, but three full totes of food. All of it stuff we can cook with or snack on. She gave us cookies, ice-cream, bacon, and almost everything else you can think of. Just look at the pictures that we took! 

Seen but not found

A Nice Waterfall

Hello everyone, I hope you have all been able to enjoy the sunshine and rain as we have. 

Since the Quarantine has been lifted for us missionaries we have visited many of our friends and have gone on many "purposeful walks". 

We have a well-traveled path right next to were we live, as well as a nice park. Many of what we call "purposeful walks" are spent just walking up and down this path and going around talking to anyone we can. Sometimes they are nervous and don't want to talk to us for fear of the virus. There are some who just ignore us and some who we actually get to talk with and share a thing or two with. 

My Comp with a Nice Waterfall

On one such occasion we had a good chat with a man playing disk golf and his father sitting and watching as his son played. They were a little on the older side, for instance the son had kids and a family of his own and his father had spent 40 years as a preacher in Colorado. 

My companion went to go play disk golf with the son, leaving me to try and strike up a conversation with the old preacher. Turns out he wasn't very interested. I ended up having to dodge the subjects he was talking about, because he was definitely trying to Anti me. Unfortunately nothing came of it, maybe some day. 

My District with a Nice Waterfall

Next week is transfers, and If things keep trending the way they have been I should be staying here. I just hope that I stops raining when we bike.

The one thing I dislike the most is biking in the rain. The only rain proof coat I have is like a sauna suit. So biking in the rain in a sauna suit or just biking in the rain, either way I get soaked. I just get to choose what I stink of, rain or sweat.

Not much else for us to talk about for today, just a cool hike and water balloon fights. 

I hope you like the pictures

Shule a rune away to waters by the sea

Zone Conference Eating

Just to be clear, the title of this email is a song that I sang my first year in high school choir.

I have found my stores of clever email titles running dry lately, so I thought that I might mix it up a touch. 

I also hit 18 months last week. So it's official, I have outlasted every sister missionaries called at the same time as me. 

I have been way too busy these pass few weeks. I have hardly had enough time to do my personal study. I feel as if time is speeding up, and now I can't get anything done. On the other hand we are visiting lots of people in person. A frequent problem we face is that we take too long in lessons.

 I love my companion, but he tells too many cool encapsulating story's, either from his mission or from his life from home. We end up taking 30 minutes of introduction and 10 minutes of lesson because we were already late. It's a work in progress and we are making lots of progress, but we have been slowed down considerably. 

We had 2 baptisms in our stake the other day. I got to interview one of them which was a first as a district leader. 

I was way more stressed about it than I should have been. For starters, this guy had rules that you had to follow when you talked to him.

The District in the Garage, enjoying the Sabbath

You can't say sorry, you can't be funny, you can't ask prying questions (which is hard for a baptismal interview) and to add up on all of this, he doesn't trust men! It all turned out well though, we had a good interview and I gained his trust I guess. Now he is baptized! 

We have been able to make an object lesson our of the whips my companion has, he jumps at every opportunity to show off his whips.

Not everyone may know this but the crack that comes from whips is a small feather-like frayed cord. The idea is that when the end of the whip is in the air, traveling much faster than the handle. When you change sudden direction of where the whip is traveling it makes a loop that goes through the rest of the whip, picking up more and more energy until it gets to the very end. At this point the end is traveling faster than 300 miles per hour and then it makes a cracking sound, which is the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier. 

The End of the Whip that Goes Crack

The object lesson is how small and simple things make a big difference. A little bit of energy traveling up the whip when multiplied can break the sound barrier and even draw blood. At this point we ask when are some small and simple things that that the Lord asks us to do, like reading prayer and going to church. We then commit them to do their best to let those small and simple things make a big difference in their lives.

Alma 37:6

" Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise" 

Comparable to the life span of a normal human being, a mission is not that long, in fact it is even less than 10%. A lot less than what the Lord asks of us.

The mission has made a huge impact on my life already, I hope that I can make the last 6 months of my mission better than all the others. 

Service with a Smile

Elder Smith and I -
on exchanges with him last Thursday.
We did Moments with Missionaries together.

 More than one person has come to stay here in the mission.

Just last week we got another batch of missionaries. A bunch who served in Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. Unfortunately I have only met a few and only got to know them for a second or two. So I don't really have any cool stories to share.

One thing worth mentioning - we had the first sacrament together as a district. Meaning that it was more than the 4 of us in the apartment, which is exiting for us.

We have had a ton of service this past week, I actually never thought we could do it, but we managed to get 10 hours of service. Most of it was gardening. The other was hauling rocks. The gardening consisted of us helping out a less active family in our ward. This family has lots of work for us to do. They have been working on their garden for a good while and it doesn't help that the local deer keep eating all their flowers.

Service with the Apartment

They have a neighbor who is 89 and is also trying to fight the deer and keep them from eating everything she grows. Just the other day she took a bad fall and since then every chance we get we come over and assist her in her gardening endeavors. It's a little slow but we follow her directions to the letter, and at the end she always says that we are a God send.

The other day we got a call from some great members, saying that their new neighbor needed help hauling rocks for their garden. At this time we were kinda bummed, because what was supposed to be our service for the day canceled on us. So we were giddy to hear that we could still do something.  It was fun, but at the end she had more rocks she had to move our of her backyard, she forgot to mention that they were more like boulders. We had to make a massive effort to roll them onto a wheel barrow and dump them elsewhere. 

Elder Searle, likes to each Oreos with milk,
but the cream fell out

At the beginning of our week we did some calf exercises. We live on the top apartment, and we have a no small number of stairs to climb each day. We decided to do 5 calve raises on each stair. Once we made it to the top, we went back down and made our way up again. But we spiced things up. We did 5 pigon toe calve raises on each stair. Then we went down AGAIN and did 5 duck calve raises on each stair. We were exhausted at the end of it, but it had much further reaching effects than we realized. 

That day we couldn't straighten our legs, our calves were too tight and we were in too much pain. To this day they are still a little sore. 

I decided to tell you this just so you could understand, for those 10 hours of service our legs were dying. We were walking around like old men and constantly stretching out our legs to no avail. 

I don't mean to complain a little but none of it was easy. However the great feeling we all got to help our others was entirely worth it. 

Look at what a prophet said about service in the Book of Mormon.

Mosiah 2:17

17 And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.

Think about the peace that God will give you if you help out another who stands in need. Will you find the strength to overcome any problems you may be facing? You may find the inspiration that you need for your job or any other thing you could possibly think of.

Nice Sunset

I would like to challenge all of you to find a way to serve your neighbors. No matter how tedious or hard it may be. Just remember that we are serving the Lord as well when we make that choice. 

I have had the chance to serve many in the mission, and each time I loved it, and I knew God appreciated it. He has blessed me much for it and has allowed me to see many people come unto Christ and change their lives. You can see it too.

I say that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

I don't know how many pictures I got this time round. I hope you like them. 

More than 18 strings

My new companion, Elder Cochenour

We are having breakfast at a members home,
it was a great view but the pollen was as thick as smoke.

So recently on our ward Facebook page we asked around asking if any members wanted us to share a short message with them. My companion wanted to see if any members had any spare guitars for us to borrow, to make Quarantine a little more comfortable during our free time.

Then a few days later a member calls us up and asks if we want to borrow his 12 string guitar, my companions prayers were answered. Not a few days later we visited some members (IN PERSON FOR THE FIRST TIME) and they asked if we wanted to borrow their normal 6 string guitar. So now we have 2 guitars and we are able to spend some of our free time sharpening our skills. It's been real fun, almost too fun.

We had to make a rule where we can't touch them unless it is during meal time or after 9:00. Since then we have gotten more work done. 

So with some of the recent changes, like phase three. We have been able to actually visit some of the members of our wards.

So far there isn't much to write home about, but a few. We live in some wealthy areas, the members of our ward's own multiple successful business, and are just loaded! 

We went to go and visit one family the other day, and they were ripping up dirt in their backyard. They had just gotten a Razor. (just so you know, we can't ride in much vehicles while on the mission). This family loved is so much that the dad was going to take is brand new used once camper on a day trip to go and buy another one for his family. While he was doing this both of his daughters were on their about to head out to go dirt biking on a mountain just around the corner. That's not all, but all that I will mention, it was just astounding to me mostly because of what they already had.

Our Zone

The members here are awesome. We got to meet a huge family just the other day. My companion was able to relate to them really well. Each member of the family was able to serve in a Spanish speaking country, so they all connected really well, and I just sat there. It was real fun.

We have found that there are lot of people up here in Hayden who like whips, and we have found someone in our ward who knows how to make some. So now we will have to try to find out how to make our own whips. I hope I can figure it out. It would be fun. 

Unfortunately, lately our Facebook finding has been lacking, we haven't been able to narrow down anyone we can teach. It also doesn't help that our Facebook page has been going down lately, we are doing all we can to revive it. Hopefully soon we can start getting adds for Facebook.

We had a devotional for the whole mission this week. I wanted to sing with my district but unfortunately nobody was ready for practice. So I ended up doing a solo, singing Savior, Redeemer. So I thought that I first had to make an audition audio recording, but what they really wanted was a video. So the morning of the devotional I ended up making a video right after I got out of bed and ready for the day. Not one of my best last second efforts but the mission enjoyed it. 

I hope you all enjoy doing stuff outside, I know I am, if it weren't for all the pollen that is.