July 15th 2013

Hey Mom,

Thanks for the email. Things are going pretty slow here in the YSA but we did pick up some awesome investigators. That is something that I do love about serving here. You may have a difficult time finding people but the people you meet are usually crazy prepared. We are teaching a girl named Lauren who is awesome! We talked to her on the street and set up a time to meet with her. This week we had our lesson and she wants to be baptized on the 11th of August.

As for other highlights for the week. We did a service project with the YSA at a saint Vincent de Paul car lot washing cars and there was an awesome van that I totally want. It's one of those vans that people usually live out of under a bridge. This week we had our mission leadership council meeting at the mission home to go over what we were suppose to talk about during zone training meeting. We were suppose to focus mostly on how to improve our finding so Elder Henrie and I made a park the the church gym so we could work on talking to people in the park. We wanted to present a theme that we could focus on so we decided on "Find em' Hook em' ". So what we did is an object lesson where i hooked an old tie and was behind a little wall we made that was suppose to be the lake. Then Elder Henrie was the Fisherman who was suppose to reel the fish in. So I acted like a fish while he chased me around the gym and then brought me in. And we talked about how it applies to missionary work. It was pretty fun and made our zone think that we were completely crazy but it was good. The look on their faces was priceless.

Other Highlight was we are teaching another kid named Nate who called us because some missionaries gave him a card with our phone number on it and he said he felt like he was being pulled toward the LDS church. He was telling us about some of his experiences and it is pretty awesome.

We also had to help move some crazy old ladies stuff around her storage unit that was completely packed with stuff. Turns out it was only 1 of 3 storage units that she has been renting for about 20 years and was full of tons of crap that was for the most part broken.

Elder Henrie went on 3 way exchanges with Veneta and Eugene Spanish missionaries. I  went with Spanish and had a pretty slow exchange. They had a Branch party to celebrate pioneer day and it was pretty fun. I don't speak any spanish so I just chilled and ate mexican food while I watched little spanish kids go to town on a pinata. Then the branch president said he had some advice to give me and then said "All you can do is all you can do. But all you can do is enough." 

Well thats about it for this week. There are tons of crazy hippies in town because of the Oregon County fair.