6/4/12

Hey mom

Thanks for the letter! Everything is going pretty good its crazy to think about who all is coming home or leaving for their missions. it does not feel like i have been gone for 8 months at all. i wish i could just push a restart button and start my mission from the beginning because it doesnt feel long enough.

The mission is going great! last night we had a baptism! I was glad to finally have a baptism after 8 months. and it was just perfect. I've gone to other missionaries baptisms that were pretty good but this one i will say topped them all. we showed up to fill the font at about 4:30 for the baptism at 6. usually it takes a font about 2 hours to fill but our ward missionary said that it would only take an hour. so we got it filled, set up some things and waited for everyone to show up. at first i was pretty nervious because almost no one was there at about 5:50 except jose who is this random homeless guy that comes to church but doesnt want to meet with us, the bishop, and the case family. but then Naomi showed up with her parents, and then at 6 everyone showed up. the entire relief society room was pretty much full. it was the most well attended baptism that i have seen. this ward is awesome at fellowshipping everyone. everything went great with the program. i have the program in my email so i will forward it to you. oh also we had 5 non members at the baptism (Naomi's parents, jose, and our investigators Liv and Grace) it was great.

Sacrament meeting here was awesome. we were the 2nd and 3rd ones up and after that the entire meeting fast and testimony meeting was on missionary work. it was awesome. there here 4 investigators there and a sister that i tracted in to a while ago who was less active for probably over 40 years but came back sunday. so it was probably the best sunday ever. other then that i cant think of anything really awesome that happened this week. i did see a kid kicking a racoon down the street on his skateboard. that was pretty neat. oh and some old guy with dementia stopped us one the steet to talk then at the end of our talk said: "They call me a hug slut. Well at least in San Francisco." and then gave us a hug. he was a neat guy. oh and a semi investigator that we had died on us last week. i felt pretty bad but he was in really bad shape. anyways thats pretty much everything that happened this week. love you all tons! oh and i will send pictures in another email

5/28/12

Hey Mom!

Thanks for the email everything is going pretty good just a ton of stress. Even though its p-day we had a lesson with Naomi. It was only suppose to be her but when we got there it was her parents, her brother who was in town and his girlfriend. we were suppose to go over the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the commandments. we started talking and she said that she wasnt ready to be baptized by the 3rd because her schedule was too crazy and she didnt like the stress. we started the lesson and we changed it to just the Gospel of Jesus Christ because they only wanted us to be there for a half hour. but because there were so many people and because they asked a lot of questions we were able to teach the commandments through their questions. after the lesson we told her that she was set and all she needs to do now is have her interview and then she will be ready for sunday. so she is back on date. she is having her interview on wednesday and hopefully getting baptized on sunday. i really hope that it goes through. it is a ton of stress. but her family is behind her with it. the parents will be there for the baptism and everything. and they liked everything that we were talking about. she has been basically our main focus right now. we started teaching a lady named sarah who is really nice. she has a lot of struggles but we are working with her and she is doing pretty good. we are trying to help her quit smoking. so other highlights of this week. we were tracting in a moble home park and we ran into a catholic lady that does some of the reading at church services. we talked with her for a while and then she blessed us with holy water. that was a neat experience. in that same trailer park we ran into a german guy named christian who worked in a coal mine in germany when he was younger, then had to serve in the german army. he moved to hawaii lived there for 15 years and now is here because his sons go to school here. we have met with him 3 times this week and he came to church. he talks a ton so its a little hard to teach him but he is nice.

I think it is interesting how when we meet with most people and teach them about what we believe they have some similar belief or they think that it makes complete sense. i went on exchanges in Jacksonville and we taught a family the plan of salvation. we had a really good lesson and at the end they said that they believe it is true. it was a really awesome experience to have. so that is pretty much everything exciting that happened this week. i hope to hear from you next week!

Ps Jo I am pretty sure you get this email and there is this lady here that needs some dirt from a piece of property in midway. i guess her family use to own it she says she only needs a little bit (a small container or so) so if you could get that for her that would be great. i will get the address for you when she tells us it.

5/21/12

Hey mom,

 Thanks for the email. i can see what matt means about people not being very religious here. there are a lot of athiests, or the environment is there religion. also a ton of them dont believe in organized religion. but they need to be taught anyway so the mission goes on!

thats sweet that spencer got his call to Arazona to be on Indian reservations. Intoducing The Book of Mormon will be a breeze. all he needs to say is that the book is about their ancesters and that it contains promised blessings as they read it and apply the teachings. i havent ran in to too many Native Americans but when I do they seem to be way more interested then everyone else.

So the mission is going pretty good. this week we taught Naomi who has a baptismal date for the 3rd. I am pretty excited for that. She has definately been prepared by the Lord. she is the perfect investigator. we taught her about the plan of salvation and the word of wisdom. she said that for about a month she has stopped drinking coffee so that was good. we had stake conference sunday and it was really good. we had 4 investigators at it so that was great because they had to drive to medford to go to it and i was nervious that they wouldnt want to come. Last stake conference here the stake president challenged the stake to read the entire Book of Mormon before the next conference. now he has challenged the entire stake to now write their testimony in the cover of the Book of Mormon and give it to someone. I think every missionary wanted to jump for joy when he said that. Sunday was super busy. we had stake conference. then taought naomi met a guy through tracting that went to BYU as a nonmember and is now writing a book about Abraham, taught a lady named Dawn and 2 member lessons (ps the member emailed a picture to your yahoo account) so it was a pretty crazy week.

so also this week I was in our second car accident. it wasnt bad we here stopped at a crosswalk and this lady rear ended us. that makes it the second accident in one transfer.
so you know you are serving in a super healthy town when you see blind people out jogging. we were driving down Syskiyou when we saw this blind lady running down the sidewalk with her blind stick. i think that would be pretty dangerious but that wasnt stopping her. she wasnt going too fast but still. anyways i think that is pretty much everything that happened this week. we are at the start of a new transfer so i forgot my planner that shows what i did so thats all i can remember.  but anyways i hope everyone is doing good! 

5/7/12

Hey mom,

Thanks for the letter I did finally get the last email. thats awesome to hear about everyone leaving on a mission i know its an awesome experience that has helped me a ton.  transfer calls are coming up. we are suppose to be getting them this saturday. Im not sure if i will be staying or if i will be going to a new area. i have been here for 4 and a half months but i want to stay here for about 3 more months. i dont know if that will happen but i hope that i will be here for at least one more transfer. because transfer calls are coming on saturday hold any mail till sunday when i skype i will know if i am leaving or staying so you can know where to send it. i think that we will be on skype at about 6 our time which is 7 there so be on at that time. i figured that would be the best time for the fam and i really dont have another time that i could do that. so just tell the family to be at home so that i can see them. i only have an hour and a half to talk so tell everyone to be there early. if you need to tell me something or change something before then snailmail me asap because we wont be able to email. also make sure dad does it too.

so now thats out of the way this week has been great! a lady and her daughter (liv and grace) who have been coming to church set up a time with us so that we can go over and teach them. they already comsider themselves mormons and the daughter told a member that she wanted to get baptized. so we are meeting with them tomorrow to talk to them more about that. we also had a lady named maranda contact us through mormon.org who basically said that she wants to be baptized. so my comp and one of our zone leaders met with her (i was in medford on exchanges with the other zone leader) and they set a baptismal date with her for the 26th. i really hope that i will be here next transfer for that. she has 2 kids and one of them is 4. we are meeting with them tonight and i am going to give zoey (the 4 year old) the book of mormon the primary gave me. so i will write later and tell how that went. total we had 4 new investigators at church which is awesome because we have been struggling for a while. but tons of miracles are happening. we had zone conference this week with president young and it was great. but i think the best day this week was sunday. we had an incredible fast and testimony meeting. oh and some kids in the ward made me an Elder Berg Jr. so now i have a son. i and to sign adoption papers and everything. i will send pictures of it.  so thats pretty much everything awesome that happened this week. at zone conference we had a OEM idol where we did a sing and dance thing. i think i will try and send the video later if i can. oh and i bought a awesome singing bowl. i was thinking about the drum but i dont have to room to lug it around so if i really want one i will get it at the end of the mission. anyways i think that is pretty much it for this week so i will talk to you all on sunday!

4/30/12

Hey everyone! specially those that didnt email or write me last week (which is everyone),

just kidding hopefully i will find something in the mailbox today. but anyways.. the mission is going good. we had an awesome lesson with a less active and his wife who says that she wants to get baptized. but the only thing is he is trying to fill out some devorce papers so that they can get married. he said that their goal is that they want to be sealed. so i figure that is a great goal to work towards. we also had an awesome lesson with another lady but she left to boston so we wont see her till june. we did some service for some people that we tracted in to earlier and when we got there they wanted us to weed mow and get rid of these barrels of dirt that they had for growing weed. but they said it was okay because they werent doing it anymore and that it was for medical purposes. you know you are serving in oregon when for service you have to help get rid of dirt that was used for growing marijuana. the people were pretty crazy and my companion forgot his jacket there so we had to go back to get it and the guy said that he would listen to our message. before he was a little harsh about things so it took me by suprise when he said that. oh and another long story short that happened this week is that the guy that we were doing service for was trying to lie to get in to the temple and talked to our district leader who referred him back to us. so we have to deal with that as well. and he calls us all the time because he is stuck in bed and just wants to talk to us but doesnt want to listen to the message or become a mormon. so yeah.

on sunday we had two people (a mother and daughter) who showed up to church randomly for the 2nd time and the daughter told someone that she wanted to be baptized. but we arent sure and we will have to meet with them to see if that is true. but if it is that is awesome. and we are starting to teach a father and daughter who the dad says he knows that Joseph Smith is a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true so we are meeting with him on tuesday to see if he wants to be baptized. so this week was pretty good. but thats basically everything that happened.

write me back!

4/23/12

Hey mom! thanks for the email and letter this week. the mission is going great. this week was a lot better then last. i called that guy that i hit and he is doing good and i dont have to pay to buy him a new tire. but im not sure if i will have to pay for damage to the car. it isnt too bad but we will see in about 2 weeks. so this week was great. we got a media referral and he seems like a pretty solid guy. we taught him about the plan of salvation and we are going to meet with him this tuesday.  basically everything awesome that happened this week for the most part happened on wednesday. we had lunch at taco bell and went to goodwill on our lunch break because i was looking for something and stumbled upon this beautiful 3 piece suit. as you can tell from the pictures its brown and if you look really close it has orange blue and  green pin stripes. it fits great and only cost me 8 bucks. goodwill is the best. we had that awesome lesson about the plan of salvation and we went to dinner with brother rocke. brother rocke is an old german guy in the ward who always takes us out for dinner. this time he took us to this place called the wild goose. it is somewhat expensive because everything is for the most part is 15 or more. except for lunch. i got shark with a lemon hollandase sauce and shrimp on top with steamed veggies and rice. oh and it came with a curry chicken soup. i think that that was the first time a had seafood on the mission other than clam chowder and it was really good. i think that i overcame my hate for seafood here. who knew that shark is actually really good. oh and brother rocke told us that we better get dessert so i had a marionberry cobbler with a cinnamon struesel and whipped cream on top.

something else that we had this week was specialized training where the mission president came down and taught us a bit about how to work harder. it was pretty good. i was going to wear my new super sexy suit but unfortunately the day or two before i realized that the suit started to smell more and more like weed. i figured it wouldnt be a good idea to show up to specialized training smelling like marijuana so i just wore my regular one. i have been hanging it outside and spraying it with frabreeze to get the smell out and its been working so far. i wore it to church and it didnt smell too bad. i think that i might get it dry cleaned but i might spray it with another bottle of frabreeze first. it really isnt too bad unless you stick your face in it so i wont give up on it. its too beautiful.  if your have any tips or tricks to get a hint of maryjane out of a suit please send me the info. i figure i might be good with the smell i mean all of ashland smells like that ill just say it smells like that because i have been out working hard. jk. but seriously you run into that smell everyday without a doubt. i dont really understand why anyone would smoke that stuff it smells awful.

so today is pday and we are going to check out some stores. there is a guy that we ran in to that sells awesome drums that he makes i am considering getting one. some of them are about $250 but there is no way i would but that the ones that i was thinking about are around $50 to $150 they are about 3 ft tall and had made by the guy so i think i might get one. some people with dreads ride skateboards while playing them. i think it will be awesome to get one. they also have these things called singing bowls that are really cool. look it up. i learned how to play one last week and they are really relaxing i think i might get that instead or i will get both. one i was looking at was about $60 but there might be some that are less. i will look around. if you could write me a letter telling me what one to get that would be great. i might just wait till next monday. so if you email it might be too late. i have leftover christmas money that i think i will buy it with.

so something else that is happening is all the weird hippies are starting to crawl out from under their rocks now that it is warming up. its nice because it gives us more people to talk to but at the same time its really gross because they are shedding their clothes a bit and they really seem to enjoy hairy pits and legs. but whatever thats ashland for you. anyways i better get going but here is a quote that i think jim can use for ben franklin plumbing " when the well is dry, we know the worth of water" Ben Franklin. I love you and whoever else you might be sending this to and like the people in Ashland say "Blessings."

4/9/12

Hey super awesome mom,

Thanks a ton for the package. it was awesome everything was great. the pictures were just what i wanted and that Alex cd you sent me. i have another one of his but that one is the one i like. the mormon message DVD you gave me was awesome. it has a great easter message on it that we used at some appointments last night. it was great. some people even cried. they are really helpful to use for dinner messages. oh and i loved isaac and ethans drawings. i put them on my wall. sounds like Easter and owens birthday was a blast. ours was pretty good. we had some investigators at church and some other less actives that havent been in a long time. this week has been good. i forgot to bring my old planner to email so i sort of forgot some of the stuff we did.

My new companion is Elder Jackman. He is a really good missionary. He is a former zone leader, so I guess I did something wrong and need to be baby sat. jk. lets see he loves: musicals, singing all the time, saturdays warrior, dancing like highschool musical, (he was an extra in high school musical), loves saying Sarene, and Loves laughing loudly at everything. On paper he sounds like my living nightmare but actually I get along with him very well. I think its due to the fact that he is a really good missionary and works hard. I have learned a lot from him so far.

So I realized that the warmer it gets here the weirder the people become. we tracted in to this house and a girl answered and had super hairy legs. people love to be "natural and free" here. last night we went over to visit a member who didnt answer their door, but their Muslim neighbors let us opened the door and let us in. they were 3 guys that were very nice. it was interesting to see their side of things and how they relate to us. they said that they expected us to swing by and visit every once in a while so we will.

Today was a pretty good pday. we had Elder Burton, Hales, Gowen, and Davis come down to spend the day. its was really fun, Burton, Hales, and Gowen all came out with me so it was cool. we checked out some of the stores in Ashland and it was pretty cool. some of the stores here are Awesome. one store had those Buckyballs that i wanted but they were like 30 bucks! that was rediculous. and they had a ton of books that i wanted to buy but they arent mission approved and i dont want to lug them around for the rest of the mission. i think that i will come back after the mission and buy them. oh but i did buy a bacon air freshener and bacon lip balm. i havent tried them yet. oh and at another ashland store i bought some prayer flags that are all over ashland. its part of the culture so i thought i should buy them.

hmmm oh last week also Elder Gamez and i corralled some dear in the field behind the institute building.

well anyways thats pretty much all the cool stuff that is going on right now.

love ya tons and thanks again for the package!

Love Elder Berg

4/2/12

Hey mom

thanks for the email

transfers came and i am staying in ashland woot woot. but the downer is elder gamez is leaving, I thought that was super lame because we were doing really good together. we did have a really fun transfer together. and we taught the best together. oh well i guess he is needed elsewhere. I am getting a new companion named Elder Hue Jackman. from what i have heard he is almost over with his mission. also (from what i heard) he loves to sing, loves musicals, is very talkative and a little femanine. but he is nice. so i will see. he is coming from up north so i dont know if he will have time to email before he gets here so i might be able to get on later today. conference was really awesome! I watched 2 of the sessions on saturday at a families home with a ton of kids. so i will probably have to rewatch the entire thing. also on sunday i watched one session at a less active part members home while i made them cinnamon and orange rolls. they turned out pretty good but the altitude and everything makes it a little difficult. but it worked. i am the yeast master. we did have a good week but at the same time it was really slow. we had some awesome lessons with some incredibly hard investigators. but it is still going really good. we got to go to the temple on wednesday. that was really awesome! the medford temple is tiny though. oh how did everyone react when they saw david archuleta or should i say elder archuleta during the general conference. i thought it was funny that they showed him at the very end of praise to the man with his spanish name tag and everything. ha ha that was totally planned. anyways everything is going good and i'll wait for that package to come. and if it is not too late could you possibly throw in some  duct tape and maybe some small about scripture size pictures of the cristus in salt lake and other really cool lds pictures. i am making a scripture box but i dont have and good pictures to put on it. thanks and love you all. also tell jo to send pics of the girls bday

3/26/12

Hi Ma,

Thanks for the email. everything is going pretty good. this week was good. I don't get that much mail other than from you and Lindsie. Erik wrote me a few times too. I do occasionally get a letter from someone in the fam too. thats cool that nick just left. he is going to mississippi right? those mini preach my gospels are great. everyone wants them but i dont have anymore. I'm pretty sure that this is Matts last transfer. this one or next. so you will see him home either in april or may i think. He served in Ashland at one point. I saw his name on the wall marking how tall he was.

Its nice to hear that all the kids are destroying the house as always. i miss all the kids but i sure dont miss cleaning up the mess. so it is the beginning of spring break here and its great. but the weather is just as messed up as Utah. one day its sunny and warm. the next its raining or snowing but overall its warming up. some flowers are coming up and its starting to look really nice around here. i think that i am staying in ashland but i am not 100% sure about that. i really wouldnt mind staying here. today we are going to go to a chocolate factory called Dagoba chocolate. then we are going to go to a unicorn store. then who knows if we have more time we might go to the hemporium then smoke some weed on the hill with some hippies. (jk on the last two) but i have been keeping my eye on this unicorn store and today we are going to hit it up. so i wish that i could email some videos of a guy in our ward rapping but i dont know if the file is too big. but i will send a picture of our zone leader when he came down for exchanges.

so this week we did pretty much the same old same old. we went to the soup kitchen as always on tuesday and our zone leader came with. i think he enjoyed it but at the same time he was probably thinking. wow these people are crazy. which is true because some of them are. one guy made a fire in the stairwell of a shopping plaza in downtown. but it only burned down one store. we had interviews thursday with the mission president and sister young. that was pretty good. we got a few new investigators this week as well. one guy we are going to start teaching has one leg and is really in to music. his entire front room is filled with records all the way to the ceiling. we also ran in to another guy last night when we were going to visit someone. he was fixing his car and we went up and started talking to him. we ended up talking to him for about an hour. I learned a lot talking with him. he has had a really hard life and through talking to him i came to find out that Oregon is incredibly racist. he is black and was telling us about some of the stuff he has went through while being here. but he said that we are welcome to come back anytime. anyways thats basically all that really happened this week. oh and the picture attached is our zone leader Elder Johnson holding a dead bird we found

Ashland Car 3/20/12

3/19/12

3/19/12

Hey mom!

So it sounds like you have been getting snow now that spring is about to start. same here. the flowers started bloming and bam! snow hits. and the weather here is just as crazy as Utah. one minute its a blizzard the next its sunny. then its snowing again. the mission is going pretty good. we are teaching a few people that are super in depth studiers of the Bible. they ask some really in depth gospel questions that make it a little interesting because it requires us to study a lot in order to answer them. you also need to know the Bible. so this week we have been doing a lot of service. we went to the methodist soup kitchen as always on tuesday. then we moved someone, went to the pear farm the church owns here and worked there. (by the way the pear farm here is huge) then we moved someone again right after the pear farm. but everything is going good. the work is picking up a bit.

so this week are interviews. on the 28th we get to go to the temple (btw thats my 6 month mark) and then transfer calls are at the end of next week the 31st. so between the 28 and the 2nd dont mail anything directly to ashland until you hear from me on the 2nd. well thats basically all for this week i will send some pictures in another email!

3/12/12

3/12/12

Hey Ma!

Thanks a ton for the package. i know i have an awesome mom when you send me great packages.  the CD's are all allowed. they are pretty good with music. we can listen to instrumental and some other stuff. for example my previous companion got some enya approved. (by the way dont send me enya, she makes me want to take a drill to my ears) and some missionaries have cds that are instrumental soundtracks to movies. one elder has the other side of heaven soundtrack and starwars. and some other ones like brave heart. its pretty cool. its nice to mix things up because you can only take that same church music for so long. oh and thanks for the book of mormon manual. its really nice to have. in answer to your questions. we have been having pretty good lessons. Elder Gamez and I teach really good together the only downside is we dont teach that much. we are trying to find more investigators because they either drop us or they are benched for a while. so we are working on that. we did get a old german lady as an investigator and we had a lesson with her this week. we brought brother rocke who is also german and use to be lutheren like her. we had a really good lesson and she talked about being in germany during the world war and hearing the bombs drop around her. they also had to flee her home town because they here against hitler so it was risky for them to stay there. her brother was also put into a consintration camp. i have been focusing alot on 1 nephi 13 and i think 2 nephi 29. i have spent a lot of time in those two chapters and the cross references there are in them. the thing i was focusing on is how the book of mormon and the bible support eachother and about why we have more scripture and how more is going to come forth in the future. its been pretty good i have been really pulling it apart. and getting really deep into it. its nice to read with ezekiel 37 to learn about the scriptures and the importance of them. i would suggest reading those 3 scripture chapters together and cross referencing all of them to see how they all talk about similar things.

nothing super cool happened this week. oh but i did eat a burger made out of water  buffalo. it was really good. its up there as one of the best burgers i have had. oh by the way when you see jim and jane tell them thank you soo much for the package they sent me back in december. i was going to write them to tell thank you but the way everything worked out at that time i lost there address so yeah.

anyways i have to get heading soon. we are going to hike upper table rock today. a few weeks ago we hiked lower table rock and i will send you pictures of the last time we went.

3/5/12

Hey ma.

thanks for the box to come. i cant wait to get it. i think that means that i will get it saturday or monday if you send it directly here. i really hope it comes on saturday. so i think i met my breaking point when it comes to listening to the same cd's over and over again. you can only take motab for so long. i wrote erik about maybe burning me some cds but i dunno. so nothing really exciting happened this week. we met some good potential investigators. but we will see how that goes. 2 of the 4 of them are in their 80's and are very set in their ways. one use to be a nun. oh something cool did happen this week we have a new companion in our group so we are in a try companionship. his name is Elder Roger. he is a really cool guy but is incredibly quiet. but he has been a great contribution to the work. attached are a picture of him and a picture of us just kicking it together. anyways thats all for this week

Crater Lake 2/27/12

2/27/12

HI mom thanks for the letter. the mission is going good still. my new companion is super awesome! he might be my best companion so far. he is a little quieter which is actually really nice but he is really good at teaching. he has been in some really hard areas where the people are super unfriendly. so he really likes ashland. ashland is still awesome. the people are really nice. and as the weather gets better the people get nicer. this week we were invited in to teach a lesson while we were tracting. this was i think the second time that has ever happened on my mission. both of the times that has happened have been in ashland. oh and a lady invited us in and gave us cookies. that was cool too. i figure if you have a super positive attitude people seem to see that and respond better to you. we got one new investigator (the lady that let us in while tracting) and she said she wanted to learn more. she is pretty old and is lutheren. she said she didnt want to change religions but wanted to take the lessons. so my first experience tracting with elder gamez was pretty funny. we were going to tract a street and right when we pulled up some jehovah witnesses pulled up at the exact same time directly across the street to do the same thing. we had a good laugh. so we got a guy that was really interested in learning more. we had met with him 2 times before and he wasnt interested but then he called us up and said he really wanted to meet with us. we taught him for 3 hours and he told us some crazy stuff about his life. i wish we could have continued to meet with him but unfortunately we wont be seeing him for a few months. thats basically all that is going on from the mission but i did bring my camera so i will try and send some pictures out in another email.

2/20/16

Hi Ma,

I'm sorry I didn't email that much last week we were in such a big rush that i just didnt have the time. last week (the week i didnt really have time to write) was pretty lax. we did however find a super awesome new investigator. it was without a doubt the best lesson i have ever been in. we tracted in to him and came by the next day for a lesson. we had a super powerful lesson about God is our loving Heavenly Father and the trials and challenges we face in life. but for the most part it was about Heavenly Father, the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ. with some Q and A about where we came from why we are here and where we are going. at the end we taught him about prayer and asked him if he would be willing to try it. so he did and started getting really emotional and i asked him how he felt. he looked at me and said; "I now feel Gods love for me." it was the best lesson i have been in. we havent seen him for a while because he isnt home but tomorrow i hope to visit him again.

so last week pday we went to crater lake. it was pretty cool but there was like 7 feet of snow or something and some overcast so it wasnt as cool as it was suppose to be. but still it was fun. i was going to send pictures but i forgot my cord and we are in a semi rush right now because Elder Ratto is being transferred to Klameth Falls and and I am getting a new companion here. So I will be staying in Ashland. which i am super excited about. I am finally staying in an area for more then 1 transfer. and what better place then Ashland. I love it here. there are some really weird people here that make it super interesting. for instance one guy told us that the Lord was actually the clouds and that "building up the Lord" is actually putting rocks on the bottom of the rivers to make clouds. but believe it or not his argument made the most sense out of any other one that i have heard here. so that kind of shows what Ashland is like. But I love it here. I hope to stay here for a while. I am actually pretty excited to get a new companion. his name is Elder Gamez. not Gomez, Gamez. I am excited but a little nervious because I have to take over the area and the mission president said that I am going to save Elder Gamez's mission. so its going to be a little interesting working with someone that going to be a little difficult but at least he gave me some warning in advance. supposedly he is a little quiet but I actually work better with quiet missionaries. so I will see how it goes. well that is basically it that is going on this week. i cant think of anything new going on. oh but thanks for the valentines package it was super awesome. i will try and write everyone back later today but if you dont get a letter im sorry. transfers on monday are the absolute worst. but hey, at least im not the one moving. anyways everyone should write me back that would be super awesome! next week i will send pictures and maybe a video of a recent convert in our ward rapping some gospel rap and a rap about Elder Ratto and a rap about me. but who knows.

2/6/12

HI mom!

yeah things are going pretty good here. this last week on pday after we went emailing we went to a place called table rock. its was actually really cool and i had a blast. as for snow goes we arent getting any at all.i guess we usually get quite a bit and rain. i guess its suppose to rain a lot here during the winter. but its only rained about 6 days that i have been here. as for pictures i am going to try and send some in this email. this week has been suuuper busy. this week we found 4 new investigators that just came out of the blue. it was pretty cool. as teaching our investigator flip goes... well... its going a little down hill. he picks what stuff he wants to follow and doesnt even realize the rest. for instance this week we went over to his house to follow up with him about the word of wisdom. we asked him how it was going, and he responded it was going good while he was drinking a beer reading the book of mormon. he is a pretty interesting guy. he says he wants to be baptized but doesnt want to be a mormon and refuses to give up tea and coffee because his thi che masters told him its okay. so we are in a difficult situation with him. so because sunday was the superbowl we werent allowed to tract. so instead we went to the park and tried to contact people there. at the park was this homeless guy who says that he has 23 names but the one he goes by right now is magic. magic we have seen around just a few times when we go to the methodist soup kitchen to volunteer. he usually tells us really weird stuff and on sunday when we were in the park he came up to us and said that 3 anti chirsts were coming. he said that mitt romney was going to be called as president and that he was going to be the summoner of the first one. yeah... he's an interesting guy. but hey thats ashland for you. anyways thats basically all that happened this week.

so these are just a few pictures. i will send more in a different email but anyways. the first 4 pictures are the before and after me cleaning the shower. it took forever and the last picture is the new duct tape towl rack our landlord made for us.