Let's get ready for some Earth Wind and Fire tonight!

Getting a haircut with the missionaries.

I remember the 21 night of September. Around that time I was in Moscow, the college town for the U of Idaho. Now I'm a lot further south and I'm am able to enjoy what the locals around here call the Banana Belt of Northern Idaho. 

I'm told here that during the winter that it doesn't get too cold, and not only that, they don't get much snow either. I hope I spend the rest of my mission down here in the mission where I won't have to break out of my cold weather clothing. 

I'm sorry that I forgot to write you all last week. This had totally spaced my mind. I guess I was having too much fun.

So the fires, after hitting a huge climax, last week have all died out. All the fire men, helicopters and mobile command centers are gone to fight fires elsewhere. The smoke that come from the fires here in Orofino were bad, but the smoke that came from them wasn't nearly as bad as the smoke from the the burning west coast. The smoke had blanketed our mission in a thick unhealthy haze. It had gotten so bad that they told us to stay inside at all times, and in the event where we would have travel to a lesson or go outside for any reason we would have to wear our masks. 

Lots of food walking around. I guess is a redneck food storage.

Covid-19 had made it very difficult to find new people. It limited out chances of ever meeting new people. However the smoke made impossible for us to do any kind of work outside, no more service for us. So our lives in Orofino became very slow and boring. But the other day there was a good rain storm and it took all the smoke out of the sky, now we can get on to business as usual. 

I almost forgot to mention. Now we can officially proselyte again!!! We can begin tracting and give this area a jumpstart and get some baptisms on the way! From this moment you can expect more stories from teaching and lessons. 

One more thing worth mentioning. In our mission, they finally approved the missionary dress codes which allows us to wear blue shirts and if we choose we can forego wearing ties all together. 

Okay, this will actually be the last thing. Today we got our transfer calls. I am staying in Orofino and will be getting 2 new companions: Elder Vazquez and Elder Poulsen. My current companion is going to one of my old areas in Moscow.

That's all folks, see you next week. 

Spicy Nose

This week some sweet things happened. 

First we got a referral that hasn't gone anywhere yet, but the fact that we got it brings tears to my eyes. We got some work to do!

Second, now that we will be having church every week more and more people will now be able to attend. Yesterday a member had brought a new friend of his to sacrament meeting. What makes this awesome is that the guy wants us to teach him about the church. He seems so promising and eager to learn, and to add to our excitement he lives across the street from us!

We spent a long time helping some members move lots of stuff around in their garage. In this garage we found lots of spiders, bullets and miscellaneous assorted stuff. Lots to clean up and lots of dust, in all the work I had a bad reaction to all the dust making my sinuses clogged and my nose leak like crazy.

After about an hour of this torture we found some nasal pepper spray for an instant cleaning of the sinuses. Only problem we had though was that the case said that it had expired in 2012. But as desperate as I was I would take any chance to not have to constantly blow or wipe my nose.

It was a spicy experience. It had me in spicy tears, but it worked like a charm.

Anyways gotta go. 

Love you all!

I See Fire

Hello everyone, today is a special day. P-DAY! 

Fire at night - really cool

Recently our zone has been putting our heads together and trying to figure out what kind of fun activities we can do even when we are required to social distance. 

So we are doing a Zone Olympics, where each district represents a country of our own making. Because my district is contained entirely in the boons, we decided to call our country Dijbooni (yes it is right spelling, just like Djibouti). 

There are many activities planned and we are just getting started. First we have to make some type of clothing that would identify us as the people of Dijbooni, to be honest there weren't many good ideas, but we all settled on tie dye shirts. 

There will be more on that later though. 

This week we had a lot on our plate, but the big one was exchanges with our district leader and zone leaders.

Helicopters everywhere! We were confused for why they were around until we saw the fire

First the district exchange, our day was looking pretty empty at that time, but after a ward coordination it all changed. 

We had heard that a new family had moved in the ward but we didn't know who. After some discussions we found that one of our members helped the new family move in and made good friends with them already. Upon meeting this new family we found that the had been inactive for a long time and their kids weren't baptized either, but it seemed like they wanted to get back into the Church. They have become the most promising people we have to teach. For us that's pretty exciting. 

For the exchange with the zone leadership I went to Lewiston. 

There we had a lot to do - service and even a few lessons. Unfortunately one of the lessons fell through, but we still had more to accomplish. One of the only things worth note in this exchange was a lesson we had with two YSA age girls. The Elders had established a good relationship with them and was able to get them to read and pray about the stuff we had to share. They had great attitudes and were eager to learn. Teaching them was great. They were so receptive and everything made sense to them. It was so fun to teach them, and I would not be surprised if they got baptized soon. 

Get to the chopper

Recently there have been a few fires in this area. The valley we live in is covered in smoke and we can see fires on the hills across the river from us. Helicopters fly day in and day out, filling buckets from the river and dumping it on the fire. All worries aside it's really neat to look at the fire at night. Today it's raining so it may not last much longer.

The next day, the fire died down quite a bit, it also began raining.

That's about it, not much else to mention for the day. I hope you all have a great week and make the most of it.

The Spirit of a Warior

A hot day for work

Hey, sorry I wasn't able to push out my email last week, we got preoccupied with buying groceries later in the day. 

I have to mention that tomorrow is my birthday, I'm turning 21! It snuck up on me and it didn't even dawn on me that I was getting just a little wiser. 

We have had some cool stuff for the past two weeks. 

For starters we had a full day of service in one of the most redneck towns I have ever seen in my life. It could give Radiator Springs from Cars a run for its money. It was a 2 hour drive from where we were in Orofino. Elk city, (for this it was called) is so far out that even our phone with special service couldn't get a connection. 

Unfortunately, along the way to service we hit a fawn. Sadly we hit it hard enough that we had to put it down. We were lucky enough to have Elder Groll with us who is experienced with this sort of thing. Although it was a little disturbing, it has helped me think a lot about how valuable life is and how we must fight to preserve it. We must make the most of the time we have here.

Much like the sons of Helaman we may be young and even lack the experience and knowledge our enemy has that would give an advantage. To the world these Strippling Warriors were rookies, many of them just around my age and younger were able to defend against their greatest enemy, seasoned battle hardened warriors. I think about how they did it, and two things always come to mind; their great faith and their noble cause to defend that which is right  "by our faith, by our religion, and by our rites of worship, and by our church, and by the sacred support which we owe to our wives and our children, by that liberty which binds us to our lands and our country; yea, and also by the maintenance of the sacred word of God, to which we owe all our happiness; and by all that is most dear unto us". I aim to be more like the sons of Helaman, to know what I am serving for and why I am serving. To have a greater faith in God.

Thank you all for sticking with me this far into my mission, I know that your support has made it easier for me to serve through these hard times.

Only Three Lives Left

On Wednesday I will hit 20 months out in the mission. At that point I will only have 3 transfers left. 

Transfers have rolled on by again. No changes for next transfer except that we are loosing Elder Staheli, he is going over to the valley and unfortunately nobody will be filling his shoes, so Elder Tullis and I will be a normal companionship. At least that is if we don't get a new reassigned missionary. 

 Some cool things have happened. We went on exchanges and actually got to have good contacts with some people at some local parks. The first group of people we got to talk with were nicer than I would expect. They were ready and eager to talk about some family history and how their family came to be in Idaho. After a few more words they told us that they were on a tight schedule. They told us that their father and husband was on his death bed. He had been struggling with cancer for a long time and it looked like he was close to passing away. We offered if we could pray for him and quickly they told us yes. After the prayer was done they were both grateful and full of tears. 

We unfortunately didn't get to talk much about the Gospel with them, but we did however become their friends that will help all future missionaries that try to reach out to them in the future. Unfortunately I have to get going right now, but here are some pictures

Dissatisfied Heat

Full day exchange with our zone.
Spent the day in Lewiston - one of the hottest days - 110 degrees

Well, this week was very underwhelming. I would love to say that we went on an extraordinary adventure high in the mountains, where we found only the most promising people to teach. But even in all our efforts, all we have to show for it this week is a box full of Anti-member literature.

Us looting the kitchen after a zone conference

We always meet lots of great members. They all support us so much, we even get to teach quite a few of them. But the only non-members we taught were our Seventh day Adventist friends. 

Our Zone

They invited is over for lunch and fed us Veggie burgers, they weren't terrible like I was expecting, but I certainly won't be eating them again. After that we spoke with them about the simple doctrine that we believe in for the space of 2 hours. Nothing was really decisive and really didn't get us anything more than a box full of books and papers on why people think that the church isn't true. The funny thing is that they told us to give it back when we were Seventh-day Adventist, little does he know, he won't be getting it back.

Full day exchange with our zone. Spent the day in Lewiston - one of the hottest days - 110 degrees

That was the most action we had this week, not much else to mention for the time being, so I'm just going to end it here. 

A sweet ride in the mountains, a Hudson Wasp

Thank you all for the love and support you give me! It's a real blessing to have so many people rooting for me here on my mission. 

Nice Views

Also just so you all know, starting August 12th, I will have 4 months left.  

See y'all next week. 

Deep fried Oreos...... Mmmm tasty

What Corona does to your hair -
especially when you put on a wig

Hey everyone, I'm back with more news on the missionary happenings in Orofino.

To be honest, not much has happened for us. 

We still don't have a lot to work with, but progress is being made.

We teach this lovely lady, who has a super strong testimony of the church. She wants to be baptized but her husband is holding her back. I normally don't ragg too much on the people in my area, but her husband is a deadbeat. He was raised in the church. Then left in his first marriage to be catholic with his wife. Later after the divorce he met his current wife who is one of the kindest people I have ever met. Her husband purposefully leverages their marriage against the church and baptism. Needless to say, we don't like him very much. Right now the lady is unsure she wants to go forward with doing anything in the church. She doesn't want to loose what she has right now with her family, which is admirable. The church is about family's being together forever, not tearing them apart, so right now we just pray that hearts will be softened and comforted.

A shed that we worked hard on,
we built the foundation and put up the
frame ourselves for a member.

Those Seventh Day Adventists are interesting. We helped them move a lot of stuff they weren't able to move themselves. Then after we sat down and they antied us about the Sabbath being on Saturday instead of Sunday. 

Of course we purposed a counter caaum on the subject, stating that either we do it on a Sunday or Saturday is irrelevant, so long as it's the seventh day of your week. Calendars have changed a lot over the ages, especially since the of the law of the sabbath. We have even had two new months introduced because of Roman emperors Julius and Agustus (you can guess which months they added). 

The member designed it all, it was a good hassle,
but was good to be down with when we finished.

We don't really like talking with them any more. It's like an echo chamber full of opinions and ideas spurned my emotions. Prayer has become our only tools for reaching out to them as well. 

Other than that, nothing ground breaking or worth mentioning happened. Just some member visits and even more service. 

Traffic has been surprisingly terrible lately. 

What the end result of a hair cut is.

They are re-sealing the roads and have been making traffic unbearable for us missionaries. 

Just today we spent 4 hours in the car, 2 of those hours were spent parked on the road. It's been hot and fun out there. 

I am unsure of haw many pictures I took of my self this time, but here are a few of my companions. 

I had never tried deep fried Oreos, 

it was a new and enlightening experience. 

 

Some weapons that some members showed off to us.
They all belonged to one of the kids,
this is not including their rifles.