A sudden change in the wind with a chance of drumsticks

 

I cooked my first turkey, it was a success!

I am so sorry, I had made this all ready to send just a few minutes before, I only had to put in the pictures. Right then my companion had to call my mission president, so I wasn't able to send it out on time. 

This will just be another long one. 

Well it looks like we are plummeting back into phase one here in Washington.

We don't know all of the details of what we are going to do, but I think it's safe to say that we will be going back into staying inside and only having online lessons. (sarcastic* yaaaaay!) 

One picture of me on front of the temple.

But it's not terrible, it will end two days before I go home, so I may be lucky enough to spend some time with some of my good friends who are also leaving the same time as me.

Another picture of me in front of the temple. (there will be more) 

Well, so for what we have in the works here in Horizon Hills ward is pretty limited. We have lots of people on our list of potentials - more than 10 times what we had in our last area. The problem that comes up is that we wither can't get in contact with them, or they won't commit to having us visit and share a short message. 

We have a few people on the list of persons to teach, but there are only a few worth mentioning. 

One is a young boy who has been taught by the missionaries for almost 3 years. His family has lost interest but he is still chugging along. He really knows his stuff. He only doesn't commit to be baptized because he wants to know what other religions are out there and he wants to explore them. Luckily we managed to get to to church yesterday. Afterwards there was going to be an activity for the youth, we asked him if he would like to go, but he declined. Unknown to us though, there was a girl in the ward who later texted him and got him to go the youth standards night. Props to the girl who asked him.

I was showing the world what I was grateful for.

For some reason all the leaves in the world decided to fall in one night. 

So we had several people texting us asking us to help them rake their leaves and such. Some of the sisters in our zone even needed some assistance with some huge jobs that some of the people they taught had.

One lady we teach likes for us to gather all the leaves in bags so she can give them to a friend of hers who raises rabbits. Apparently, according to her, rabbits eat the fallen leaves. I never knew that before.

Besides that nothing else is new. We try to get in contact with the people we teach but have no luck other than the few I have mentioned.

Next week. 

Happy Thanksgiving ya'll! 

Alright lots of raking leaves that are wet and rotting, not surprised. People wait till the last second to start raking their leaves, the problem with that is all the leaves get wet from the rain which makes them heavy and slimy. I am not a fan.

Just a fraction of the leaves that we have raked.

We have had lots of good member visits. 

Unfortunately lots of people continue to cancel on us, but we at least can tell which ones cancel, because they don't want to see us or because they actually were busy. 

We had a Facebook referral, finally. 

It's a lady who doesn't have the time to take down her pool, so she wants out help. Interesting service and I can't say that I have ever done anything like that before.

Unfortunately we lost a companion, he had something come up at home that he had to attend to, so now I am no longer in a trio. 

My good friend Elder Catmull.

Another unfortunate thing that happened, we can't have Thanksgiving dinner with the members like we had planed, so now as I type this I am cooking a turkey. It's my first turkey so I don't know how well it will turn out, but I'm sure that it will be good. Members are still bringing us food though. The turkey cooking is one of two turkeys we were given along with a bunch of other things.

We get to have dinner with our district at least...... And it was a blast.

The sisters made breakfast, looks like we were the only ones who brought Thanksgiving themed food but hey, we feasted. 

When we got home after some members from our ward gave us even more food. We don't even have enough room in our once was practically empty fridge. 

We have a lot to be grateful for, especially that video that President Nelson made a few days ago. If you haven't watched it yet you'd better do it quick it is a touching video that can help anyone through a rough spot in life.

My time is about up, thank you for all your Thanksgiving wishes. I will see you all soon, just about 20 days away. Be ready for me. 

For those of you who didn't know already, 

This is what my mission president looks like. (yes he is in 2D).

My Time Has Come...

I'm not happy right now, I just finished my weekly and was about to press send, but I instead pressed paste and deleted all that I had just wrote. The first half of this email will be for last week...

The family that hosted me my first day in the mission. 

Never though I would see them again, let alone serve in their ward.

So my time to go has finally come, I'm leaving Orofino and I am going to Spokane Valley.

It's no Valley of the wind like Spanish Fork, but Spokane Vally has some good qualities. For instance, the mission office is there and the temple.

I will be close to the APs (assistants to the president) which might be a little over bearing, but I don't know these guys, they may not be all that bad. My new companions are Elders Brown and Elder Catmull and I don't know a thing about them.

Our Zone

I'm going to miss Orofino, the rednecks with guns, the deer that have no idea that the road is the wrong place to to stop running. All of the hardy members who aren't afraid to speak their mind and the beautiful landscape, those hills and valleys teaming full of wildlife and scorched earth from fires. It really is a wonderful place.

Well, we met some cool people the other day.

We offered to serve one guy and he beamed when we said that. He had gone through some back surgery recently and was unable to change his flat tire. He was more happy to let us help. After he was ready to listen, asking all sorts of questions about the Gospel. His wife who was a member helped out a lot as well.

Our sleeping arrangements.  I have top bunk.  

It's fun, but I have to be careful about bumping the light at night 

since I am so close to the ceiling.

We went looking for a young man named Joe, and found at the address an older Joe. He was the father of the Joe we were looking for. Both Joes were great guys, both ready and eager to talk with us, just not this week, but next. They said that they wanted to talk about the BOM and even discuss a little about it as well. I'm super sad to not be able to teach them, but I can't really complain. I'm just glad we have people to teach now. (don't know what's happening with the text right here, just ignore it.)

Roll out the red carpet, because I'm coming home in 6 weeks.

It's been a blast and I'm not done yet, but I am bound to make a difference in Spokane Valley. 

Okay next week...

So this week things have been dropping temperature wise, good thing I'm already geared up for it.

So far we haven't had much success in this area. 

Spokane Temple

This area is where lots of missionaries end their mission (we call it dying). I am the third one in a row for this area, and even next transfer.  I'm Com companion Elder Brown stays in this area he will end up dying as well, making it 4 in a row. 

This area is really neat. Lots of ground and houses to cover, and lots of opportunities. I hope that I will have more to report on next week but so far not too much has happened. 

The other day we spent our service helping take care of some horses and removing all the moldy hay they had in their barn. In this zone all the missionaries show up at one service, so it was packed with missionaries. 

Only about 5 weeks left, gotta make em count! 

I hope everyone will have a good week, I will be trying to. I don't have much more to write about so until then.