Winters invitation

Brrrr, it's cold out here.

A cat broke into our apartment. 

My companion made the mistake of feeding it 

before we kicked it back out. 

May as well take a picture though.

Who would have though that Orofino (labeled the Banana Belt of Idaho) would have such low temperatures before Halloween?

I was a little surprised by this sudden change in air, but the cold doesn't really phase me much. I have a companion who really doesn't like the cold we have experienced so far, but the jokes on him, this isn't as cold as it gets. 

Winter should know that I can't just come in uninvited, but what can we do huh?

It's Me.

How is everyone doing? I don't hear much of what's happening with my buddies these days. I just keep forgetting to message and email y'all, not counting my weeklys of course.

Still don't know what my flight itinerary is. Would have gotten it a few weeks ago, but the virus and political unrest may have delayed the final decision a bit. I'm still pretty confident that i will be coming home around December 16, but who knows at this point? About 7 weeks to go? 

Fog filled Valleys

Funny story, I met another Willis family in my area. They are members but because the virus we haven't been able to meet them until now. They are a really cool family, a lot like mine, but not 15 minutes away from three different temples. The all have awesome testimonies of the church. I was shocked to see the 13 year old boy share his testimony of the Holy Ghost. Just a stellar family.

The valley the tracks run through.  

It was brisk, but pretty.

There are some members in our area who own a considerable amount land that goes over some train tracks. 

The tracks have bridges that are out on both sides so it's pretty isolated. However this did not stop them from making the most of these tracks, they had made a gas powered platforms that could move back and forth on the tracks. It doesn't go very fast but it was a fun ride. There are pictures to come. 

Our Snowy Landscape

We have a lady praying for a baptism date. She has been a wanting to be baptized for a while now and now she has made up her mind on the idea. Hopefully I will be around when she gets baptized.

A members past time, making and flying remote control planes.  

They can go anywhere from 60 to 120 miles per hour.

I don't know what it is, but I seem to have caught the local red neck bug. Once I get home I want to go hunting with some of my mission buddies. We have long talks about hunting stories in this area, about how some of the members just shoot from their bedroom window and manage to score dinner. Or a 13 year old boy will be walking around his property and shoots a Turkey and a Grouse at the same time. I may have a story or two like that after a while.

Our little train contraption.  

We had seat belts in case you're wondering. 

And once again, it wasn't fast at all.

I really need to get going, but I hope you all have a great Halloween. 

Please let me know if you went trick or treating, or if any of you had any other cool ideas for fun on that fun Spooktober day. 

Until next time. Enjoy the pictures.

Brand new missionaries/ splitting logs

Hello everyone, I'm jut going to say right now, this email will be a little shorter this time. 

Anyone for duck soup?

But without further adieu here was my week:

We went on exchanges with our zone leaders. 

Both trios stayed in Orofino and that evening we found 6 potentials for Orofino. 

Some more promising than others but still its progress. 

Splitting Logs with the Ward

One lady worth mentioning. We set up a time to visit her a few days after she was found.

I wasn't the one who found her so I had no idea what to expect. 

She is very shy and doesn't do crowds at all. She even gets really stressed out by small things. Upon arrival we met her mother, who greeted us with distaste. Turns out previous missionaries visited her late at night and pushed themselves onto her a little too strong. The mother was there to make sure that we didn't do anything to make her daughter stressed.

Only halfway done with the work.  

We then had to unload and split

All in all we had a good lesson with her, but she said she would prefer to set up lessons instead of us. She wants to be prepared for us when she wants us over. This basically told us that she doesn't want us to come over anymore, it's all in her hands. 

We have two just ordained Elders in our ward who are in the online MTC. 

Their p-days are on Saturday, but because they can't really do anything due to the missionary rules, they want to come out with us to find and teach. So we happily obliged and had a good time.

Unfortunately not too much happened that day but next Saturday we are going out with them again. Fingers crossed for miracles. 

A Great View of the Valley

Last week a sister called us in a frantic panic.

She had sold her house and had to be out by Saturday.

So we had saved the majority of the day to help her out, the the day of the service came.

We didn't know when she wanted us over, so we called her up asking if we could be there by 10:00. Turns out that her boys the day before we had planed to help her, came and took care of everything. So we kinda got trolled there. 

Another Great View

The same day also helped our with chopping wood for some members in need. 

It took longer than expected and took us a whopping 4½ hours.

It wasn't easy, but it was fun. We mostly stacked and split wood with mauls. But it was cool to be surrounded by chainsaw cutting logs for us to load into the truck.

Well I got to get going now. Hope you all have a good week. 

Spontaneously attacked by a swarm of Lady bugs

The District

I bet you never heard a more strange title for an email.
It's no competition, but I'm just saying, it's a strange one for sure.
Well here is the story. 

A foggy and rainy day.

We offered service to a family that needed their flowers dug up. They plan to put in something the deer won't eat like bleeding hearts or something. My companion was a landscaper before his mission. He knew how to make the job quick and easy for us.  It would have been the perfect service if it hadn't been for those ladybugs. We dig up the roots of these flowers and in big clumps falling from the roots and dirt there were thousands of ladybugs.
It wouldn't have been a problem.... If they would just sit still. After a few minutes we had swarms of ladybugs just flying aimlessly all throughout the area, getting in our hair, calling up your pants legs and just being plain annoying. I never though I would see so many in my lifetime! 

A nice day for church. 

Next we tried to visit some members, but they told us they weren't interested. As we drove away we found two old guys trying to lift a heavy wood stove into a truck bed. My companion asked if they needed help and they didn't hesitate to yell, "Yes!"

Local burger joint. Only fast food in the town.

After helping them out one of them took off to deliver it while the other stayed behind, because it was his house.

We got to know a little more about him, he was a pretty interesting fellow. 

Flower Service

He had traveled the world helping various militaries in other countries. He trained combat medics and was able to make a great living for himself. He was Jewish, but he said he wasn't, but he was. 

He talked about going to the synagogue, or that he would only read the book of Moses and he believed that Jesus Christ was only a prophet - lots of stuff like that. Maybe he has an identity crisis or something. Because he wasn't really open to hearing our message out, but still said we could come over and visit.

The Lady Bugs

Those are the highlights for this week. 

I'm sure the pictures will tell you a little more. II will talk to ya all next week. 

See ya!

For a youth activity - 

Don't worry, I took no part in it

Game Time

Master Shifu

Alright, quite a bit has happened for me this week. But because I wrote so much on an unpleasant experience I had I will only touch on 3 subjects for today. 

First: we helped some members move the stuff from their closed store. 

We expected it to be a long service, but no where near as long as we expected. 

They had opened up around the time the virus became a worry for the world and everyone went in quarantine. They found that it was extremely bad for business and they had to close down their newly opened store. 

It took us about 6 hours of lifting to empty the store of all they owed. 

Second: we had a lesson set up by some members. 

The guy we were going to teach had been trying to teach the members how to play Dungeons and Dragons (I'll refer to it as D&D for the rest of the story). The deal was that we teach a short lesson and he would then teach us all all how to play, or so we thought. 

We arrived right as they were done eating dinner. As we sat down, our friend (I'll call him Dwain) brought out some pre-made character sheets and we jumped right into a story. My companions and I did not expect this at all. I figured that we would take forever explaining how to create a character and all that but nope. 

It went a lot longer than expected. Our adventure was simple, but we made it more complicated. To cut the long story short my one of the members tried to steal what we were trying to protect, so my companion made him soil himself and the member was kinda mad at this so he made his character kill himself. 

That's was our experience anyways. 

It was really fun, I was shocked to see my companions enjoying it, they seem to be more of the spoil sport type to me but they are alright. 

Third. On Saturday I woke up with the same sore throat I've had for a month. The members who we were going to watch General conference told us they woke up feeling under the weather, so I thought (oh no, I don't want to get them any sicker than they are, I'm going to load up on vitamin C). What a terrible mistake I made!

I hope this doesn't come off an angry, I'm laughing about it now, but then I was regretting just about every life decision that lead me to that point. 

So what happened was that I took 1,500 mgs of vitamins C more than 2 thirds of what the body can handle per day 2,000 mgs. 

I was fine until halfway through the first session. I felt a very violent heart burn and intense nausea. I was hoping this was something that some medication could fix like pepto bismal, but boy was I mistaken.

By overlording on vitamin C I threw off the pH level of my stomach acid. This made me unable to handle any food.

At first I was very covert about it. I snuck out to our truck during a Hymn and downed a couple pills to calm the raging storm in my stomach. Immediately after though hurled it back up. 

Thinking the worst was behind me I went back inside and acted like nothing had happened, wrong. The members gave me a cinnamon roll and halfway through eating it some time later I had the same results. 

Knowing now that something was wrong, but being a missionary, I still ate the food that was offered to me, like a broken pencil sharpener taking the pencil and doing its job, but throwing all the shavings around in the air like confetti. (I wasn't that bad, but I thought a good visual would be nice).

The members were being nice, but oblivious to the fact I was ill ,gave me more food, but I had learned my lesson this time around. They are some of the nicest members I know in the area and I don't hold them even with the slightest contempt. 

My companion a little bit less oblivious than the members noticed something was wrong, and offered to let me lay down in the back of the vehicle instead of driving the hour back home.

Keep in mind that I was still feeling heavily nauseous and it was a bumpy ride.

I'll just say that it was more than once that I made them pull over so that I could get a quick ab workout, and it was only the day before where I actually had a legitimate ab workout. Needless to say that I was hurting.

Around the time we got back in town I was pretty drained. My companion suggested that we go to the store and get a Powerade to resupply those lost electrolytes. Then I saw what would save me, it's bubbles and carbonation beckoning me to take a sip Ginger Ale! A drink I knew that would helped my troubled stomach. (as I was writing this, I was struggling to come up with other names I could use instead of ginger ale, like red head whiskey or Irish swig but I realize that it would be easy to confuse with real alcohol so I though it would be a bad idea. I think I would never put anything like that in one of me weekly emails. 

Anyways that drink saved me, and from the point I started sipping it I started feeling better, the battle in my stomach was dying down and I haven't lost lunch since. Now I'm all better, just have sore abs.

That's my report for the week. I hope y'all had a good General Conference like we did.

Mmmmm..... Road kill.

 

My other new companion, Elder Poulsen

Helloooo everybody!

Once again we have a wonderful day as the temperature proceeds to drop from comfortable warm temperatures.

Lately its been rather chilly, I'm starting to have to wear a light jacket everywhere I go now. 

You all know this man, it's Elder Vazquez, we came out together.

Things have picked up now that we can actually get back to work. Already we have had more lessons than our previous week and we aren't being close to done yet.

My new companion is companions are crazy and fun. We have had many funny moments already, one of my favorites involves road kill.

Every time we pass by a roadkill that wasn't intact, one of my companions either wants the meat or the pelt of what the animal is. So far he has not had success, but I believe that will change soon.

He also tells members if any of them hits a dear to call us so we can take care of the body. 

Orofino Mountain Range

So far we have done a ton of service. Just the other day, we helped some members move out for about 6 hours. We have helped others by digging fence posts and building additions on to homes as well. The service just keeps coming. 

Orofino

We have been having some sweet lessons.

Lately there has been a returning member reaching out to us. Her family lives in the ward as well, but she wants to avoid them for the time being. She had toldus that she wanted to change and work past all of her mistakes, and upon further discussions it seemed to me that she didn't need to talk to us as much as she needed to talk to bishop. (You see, our leaders make sure that we understand that us missionaries are called to teach not to council. They tell us to leave it to people who have been around longer and would know how to deal more delicate situations). After a while we were able to convinced her to talk to the bishop and since then she's been on cloud 9 (she's happy). 

Orofino is pretty

We have lots of plans in the works for teaching people. We plan on rallying the members to help us find and teach. If we are successful in this we will be able to revive the work in this area. I will let you all know of our tender mercies when they come. But for now I must go.

I love you all and thank you for your support and emails throughout my time here in the Spokane Washington Mission.

Sunset

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!