Monday, June 17, 2013

The final verdict…I’m staying in Portlandia!!

Glad to hear that you all are enjoying your summer so far! It sounds like you all are having a lot of fun doing the various things, like swimming, going to the movies, etc. I think one of the hardest things for me being state-side is that I get to hear about all these films coming out and I can't go see them.

Sorry to hear that dad has been feeling sick the past week. Hopefully he gets to feeling better soon, if he's like me when it comes to those types of things it's not that great. I hope you had a good Father's Day, pops!

That's pretty funny, you'll always get people fighting/fueding over things like the word of wisdom or other deep, dark church doctrines. We've had our mission president straight up tell everyone at zone meetings what the official declaration of the word of wisdom is.. People get into all sorts of debates on what kinds of teas are okay, how everything that could be considered "addictive" (chocolate, facebook, etc.) is against the word of wisdom, and my favorite debate on good ol' soda pop. People need to just stick to the things outlined and not conjure up these abstract views on it.. I've had to defend good old Coca-Cola various times on my mission. I want to get a Coca-Cola shirt and just always wear it under my white shirt so I can rip my shirt off with pride when those situations present themselves.

So for the final verdict on which mission I will be in.... I will be staying in Portlandia! Either me or Elder Schmidt are getting transferred out, so I'll be staying in the mission after all. I'm pretty alright with it, we're still going to be allowed to visit the coast and there's a few metro areas in which I could still possibly serve (downtown if they get rid of the senior couple there!). Yeah, it will be interesting to see what this transfer meeting is about. Hopefully it's good though; it's counting as our preparation day...

Elder Whiting's tour of the mission was pretty insightful, he had a lot of interesting things to say. He talked a lot about our purpose as missionaries, the difference between power and authority (within the priesthood), and about how our desire/obedience will affect our spiritual power as missionaries. It was pretty good stuff.

Thanks for the genealogy charts, we're helping another person in our ward start her family history work so while the specialist in our ward helps her we get to mess around on FamilySearch. It's a pretty cool website, actually. I remember hearing some crazy family stories (like one of our ancestors being a preacher's son and riding a horse into the church out of rebellion or something like that) and I've been trying to piece together who the stories belong to, etc. It's pretty neat.

Things in our area are going good.. It's tough though because we've been trying to visit with a lot of people but they just won't make the time for us/won't let us in. We've got two people (Michella and this other young girl, Rena-Maria) who are really close to setting a date to be baptized. The other people we're teaching, it's a work-in-progress.

Yeah, that's the Albert's address- if you're going to send bread then just send it directly to the house address. People who want to send me letters though, still send it to the mission office. It's just easier that way, I have one of two letters for me floating around the mission because they were sent to our Wilsonville apartment and zone leaders have been tasked on giving them to me... So it will be awhile til' I get them.. I talked with my last companion in Wilsonville last night though, and I guess a lot of the work has picked up there, and they're splitting the two wards so they'll have individual missionaries! It was nuts to hear about all the people that they're teaching now. It's weird how things will just pick up like that after I spent four months there with absolutely nothing to do.

Well, I love you all and hope you're doing well. Get feeling better soon Dad!

No comments:

Post a Comment