Portlandia

October 26, 15

Yes, as the tile implies, we got transfer letters and unfortunately I
will not be staying in Lake Sacajawea. And apparently nobody took my plea seriously to pray for "anywhere but Portland" cause that's where I'm headed! haha I’m actually really stoked about it. I'm going to the Alameda Portland Ward and apparently missionary work is so crazy there right now that they're putting four missionaries just in that ward! It'll be an adventure, and I've been told that all the good stories come from Portland, so if you're bored don't unsubscribe from the blog just yet!

Besides transfer letters, we had a lot of other cool things happen
this week. I think that I mentioned the M**** family last week as a
family that was slowly making their way back to church. Well they are that, and they are also now the fellow shippers for our best new
investigator. What? yeah.  I don't really know how it happened either. We were just teaching them on Tuesday night like we always do when their good friend Heidi walks into the house. The M**** introduced us to her and they were casually like "oh yeah and by the way Heidi came with us to stake conference last year where Elder Hales was speaking. Before the stake conference he met her and later that day he concluded his final speech with a testimony born directly to her." Then Heidi was like "yeah I didn't really understand why that old guy was talking directly to me, but it felt really cool." Then Heidi told us that she's already read the book of Mormon and everything and knows that it's true. Wow. Heavenly father really prepares people!

On Friday we had another cool experience with an investigator named L****. L**** is kind of really an Eternal Investigator. She has been meeting with the missionaries for like a year and we haven't gotten anywhere. Well, since I’m leaving the state, it kind of fell upon me to tell Lisa that we couldn't come by as often if she couldn't keep commitments. Oh man. But as I started talking to her, I realized that it wasn't really Lisa's fault that she's never received an answer as to whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, cause she had never even been taught to pray! So we spent like the whole lesson teaching her how to pray and receive answers. Then Lisa told us that she had had a dream last night of her grandma coming and telling her that she would "be with her every step of the way through this process." It's awesome how the Lord prepares people when we as missionaries do our part!

I've got so many stories from this week and not much time to write, so I'll skip the story of the anti-ambush haha it was pretty much just
what it sounds like. One of the funnier stories happened just last
night, when my comp and I were tracting at like 8:00 at night. We were just going down the street when we knocked on a house that had a big glass square in the middle of the door so that you could see like half of a person's face. Well after we knocked, we saw part of a girl's face, and when she saw us she was like "oh no! It’s the missionaries! How did they find me here?!?!" and then she ran away and a really big man opened the door. He said he was catholic and quickly closed the door on us. So what would you do in this situation? Go back of course! We had no idea who that girl was! So we waited like 15 minutes then went back and knocked on the same house. Again, that girl looked through the hole and ran away but I recognized her this time as a totally active young woman in the ward.  what? So this time a mom answered the door and was like "how many missionaries are there? We just had 2 knock on our door like 15 minutes ago" We were like "oh yeah there's a lot of us out here" then we asked if Z*** W***(the young woman was there) and she came out from hiding under the couch and was like "oh man you caught me" hahaha it was the weirdest thing
ever and still doesn't make sense and you probably just had to be
there, so I'm sorry for making you all read this ha.

Well that's all for this week, quick S/O to Dave Heywood and Jake
Anderson who had birthdays this past week (I wore the birthday tie) and S/O to Skyline soccer for taking the state title and S/O to my cousin Joseph who got third in state for XC! (Getting third is kind of a family tradition)

Oh and learned a fun fact about Longview this week, my comp's uncle used to be a police officer in Longview and he has the record for the most times being shot at (5 times shot at and 2 times hit) and they were all in our area!

Love you all, hope you have a great week!
~Elder Thomas

The Fijian brother ran for BYU and still holds records there. I'm holding

pics of the stamps that he was on in Fiji. 

Everything between frozen fish and the weather has turned

October 19, 15

Hey All, one more week in the books! We actually ran every day this
week, even one day when I lost my running shoes for a day, we pressed
on in flip flops. ha also the weather turned this week. I have been
told not to expect the sun or short sleeves until June.

As far as the work, this week was pretty productive. The day after my
comp and I paid our fast offering we got two new investigators. Their
names are Berry and Walter. Berry's wife just died and we told him
about the plan of salvation, and Walter is a former investigator who
kind of fell off of the map but when we found him he was pretty
excited about the Book of Mormon and gave us a frozen fish.

Unfortunately Angelo didn't make it to church but B***** did
which was awesome. B's wife is a recent convert who is kind of
less-active already and so we go over to teach her about once a week
and B**** sits in on all the lessons to support her but keeps
telling us that he is and always will be "just spiritual." He seemed
to really enjoy church though and I really hope he could feel the
spirit.

We also got the M***** to church this week, which was awesome. I realize
I haven't really told you guys much about anyone we’re teaching, but
that hour at church was the culmination of like 3 months of praying
and persuading. They are a less active family whose son was killed in
a drunk driving accident by another member’s drunk son. Needless to say
there were a lot of issues to address, but through the workings of the
spirit they have become able to put it all behind them.

We also asked had a sit down appointment with the bishop asking what
we could do for the ward, he said we could give a talk in a couple of
weeks. ...dang we shouldn't have asked! I also lied last time,
transfer letters actually come THIS week!

Quick S/O to my alma mater Skyline who either just played or is about
to play Olympus for "the Rock"
S/O to Jake Andersen who has a birthday on Saturday
S/O to Sam Demill who got his mission call to Mexico
S/O to stake centers for having volleyball courts
S/O to my district for winning the zone Olympics

Take great care of yourselves,

~Elder Thomas

A Really Good Week

October 11, 15

This has been a really good week, I'm still on a buzz from conference
and I watch at least one talk every morning while I eat my cereal
(yes, without my angel mother i can't eat waffles every morning for
breakfast anymore). Mostly we've been cleaning out potential
investigators and less-actives from our area book, but we've done a
good chunk of tracting as well.

By far the best day this week was Thursday. It was my companions
birthday, so he got a ton of food sent from home, and we also went on
exchanges with the assistants to the president. To be honest i
couldn't tell you what made it so good - we were just doing ordinary
missionary work, but for some reason that day was one for the books.
We also had dinner with ma' girls again that same day except it wasn't
only the widows. We went to a mexican restaurant and took up like the
whole fiesta room. It was my companion and I, the AP's, two other
Elders from Mint Valley, the three widows,  like 10 members from the
Lake Sacajawea ward and another 10 from the Mint Valley ward! PARTY!
To end off the night the AP's bought Elder Davenport and I shakes for
Elder Davenport's birthday. That was definitely one of the best days
of the mission.

Saturday we also had a cool miracle. I felt like we should go visit
President Pond's house. He's the president of the Portland temple, so
he spends most of his time in a house down there, but his old regular
house is in our area. It was a weird prompting because he almost
assuredly would be in Portland at this time of day. well.... he wasn't
there. whatever. But as we were walking back to the car we met a 16
year old kid named angelo. He wasn't extremely interested, but we told
him about the plan of salvation and gave him a book of mormon. lo and
behold he read the book of mormon and was so fascinated by it that he
rode his bike to church the next day! After church we asked him when
we would see him again and he was like "umm i'm kinda busy this week,
i think we'll have to wait until church next week" Sweet!

Another cool miracle was Sunday night at like 8:30. We were visiting
all the less-actives on a pretty ghetto street. This one girl (sally)
was listed in our ipads but only the apartment address, not the apartment
number. Like i said, it was 8:30 and we really didn't want to knock
all these doors so late. So we folded our arms and said a prayer to
know which house was hers. Literally we hadn't even unfolded our arms
from our prayer before Sally walked out of her house to have a smoke.
Sweet!

Today we spent all day driving to and hiking the Ape caves by Mount
St. Helens. They are these really long underground caves carved by the
lava flow of the volcano. I would attach pictures of it, but it was
pretty dark in there ha. It also took all day so i have zero email
time, so i'm sorry i couldn't write anyone back.

We get transfer letters this week, so pray for me - anywhere but
Portland!! haha jk that's just what most of the Elders say.

Hope you all have a great week!!

Conference Cliff Notes by Elder Thomas

by popluar (my mom and dad's) request i've been asked to say what I do in a day or week, so here it is: 

6:30 wake up and try to exercise

7:00 shower and get ready for day

7:30 eat breakfast (wheaties and honey nut cherrios)

8:00 personal study

9:00 comp study

10:00 train my companion ...and myself

11:00 lunch

12-5 spend three hours tracting and two hours visiting less actives and potential investigators.

5:00 eat dinner with members

6-9 go to appointments with members that hopfully we have set up during the week

9:00 daily planning

9:30 get ready for bed

10:30 sleep.

repeat.

here are some things that happened this week; i found a slug sliming its way down the wall of my bedroom when i woke up. we ran out of gas on sunday so we had to walk everywhere haha yeah that one was all my fault. we had two district meetings because we forgot to tell the hermanas about the first one. we watched conference with members until we ran out of gas, then we just streamed it on our ipads in  our house. I got sick from a flu shot but that only lasted like two days, and apparently my first niece was born this last week! Below i'll just include my notes from conference and rumors i need to get to the bottom of;

Rumors: can anyone confirm or deny any of thses rumors?

1) Tayllor swift is engaged

2) Utah has a good football team

3) Donald trump is running for president

4) Hope is actually dating a guy

If there is serious evidence for any of these please let me know!

here are some notes i took during conference:

- Living the gospel doesn't need to be complicated.

- Resentment damages your progress. You can let this go.

- We all must be willing to ask, what lack I yet? 

- Ponder before you pray.

- Ask to see your strengths.

- Self control is like a muscle.

- If you never borrow money you'll never risk bankruptcy 

- Knowledge does away with suspense fear and doubt.

- Darkness cannot exist where knowledge is.

- Prayerfully select mentors.

- If you want advice, be prepared to take it

- The savior lifts, carries, and delivers us to places we could not get to without his help.

- We choose how we let doubt influence us.

- The more we persist, the brighter light becomes

- Humble yourself before the lord and he will lift you up.

- To obey is better than to sacrifice.

- Faith grows by choice, not by chance.

- The lord more than matches us our willingness to act in faith.

- Do not procrastinate or give up.

- Daniel could have avoided ridicule, he could have been popular. He would have been totally fine       ...until the king demanded an interpretation of his dream.

- Wanting to Believe is the first stem. It requires humility, an open heart and an open mind. It requires an experiment and most difficult, it requires patience on the Lords time.

- Be not afraid, only believe.

- The lord will qualify him who he calls.

- The lord has called you because of what he needs to do through you. He can only do that if you do things his way.

- True disciples are not looking to make excuses for the doctrine

- Pay fast offering 

- Only through the Holy Ghost can we see people and events as God sees them

hope you all have a great week and choose one scripture to ponderize

 Watching General Conference

 Ditto