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.