83rd week in Spokane

Had a fairly good week. We are teaching this new couple named Leah and Dustin, they are fun to teach, they always have tons of questions. Right now it just seems like they are going at it at an educational point of view, but as they read from the Book of Mormon they will gain a testimony of it. One really exciting thing that happened, I don't remember if I had mentioned it before, but we tracted into the Methodist pastor in Clark Fork and talked with him for a while, and he covers three congregations, one in Clark Fork, Id, one in Heron, Montana, and one in Noxon, Montana. After talking with him, we sang him a song and he invited us to come sing at his church on a Tuesday night worship service. We did that this week and it was pretty fun! We sang “I know that my Redeemer Lives”, “I stand all Amazed”, and “Redeemer of Israel”. it was a good time! We were sorta shuffled around again this week with our living situation, but we are back again now with the Bennetts. So things are going good here, we don't really have any investigators that are progressing, but we're working on it! In the zone, though, we have three baptisms this weekend so that's gonna be really good! Another guy we're working with is Stan, we made some way good headway with him last week with the Book of Mormon which will cause him hopefully to take a more serious look into things. We see him tonight so we'll see what happens. Well, that's all I got this week, love ya!

82nd week in Spokane

We had a very eventful week! On Wednesday we got a call from the people we live with and they told us that there was a fire in their kitchen! The kitchen is completely destroyed, thankfully no one was hurt. So we had to go and gather up all our stuff that got covered in smoke and soot. we stayed for two nights at a members home and then we moved again to a different members guest house where we will be staying for probably about two months. The Kopsa's house will be gutted and repainted and a new kitchen and new carpet and all that. Pretty crazy. The new people we live with, the Bennets, they have in their basement a six year food storage for five adults! There is a TON of food down there. Anyway, about a week ago, their basement flooded so they now have to remove their concrete floor and fix their foundation, which means they need to move all of their food storage. So Saturday morning we helped with all of that... and I'm still sore from it! Then we had to run real quickly afterwards to the church to start filling up the font. This became very frustrating. There was no cold valve which means that it was just straight hot water coming out which means if we wanted it to come out fast then the hot water would run out very quickly and if we let it go so that the water would heat up as it went, it would take way too long. So... when it came time for the baptism, the water was cold, and extremely low, barely even to their knees! They tried dunking twice which didn't work, then the third time they had Sam sit down and his dad kneel, and that worked. I felt pretty bad because it was our fault for not starting the water sooner. Oh well. It was a way good service, the spirit was very strong. Then, the next day he was confirmed and then we took Sam out teaching with us to a boy named Michael who is also fourteen who was baptized about two years ago but hasn't been to church in a bit. It went way good, Sam did awesome! He's an amazing kid! Well, we got transfer calls yesterday and... there's no change for us. But, the zone got mixed up a bit. In Bonners Ferry there's an Elder coming in thats from Knoxville, and I've served around him before so that will be good, his name is Elder Trowbridge. In Libby, Montana, an Elder is coming in to be the District Leader named Elder Crosby, he served with Katie, my sister, in the Saskatoon Canada area, he was the ward mission leader when Katie was serving in his ward, so that's gonna be fun. One more exciting thing has happened.. For my new years resolution I wanted to lose twenty pounds before I came home so I decided that at the end of each transfer I would weigh and measure myself. Since January, I have lost a total of fifteen pounds. Three inches off my stomach, and two and a half inches off my waste! I've still got a lot of work to do though in order to get where I wanna be by the time I get home! The Bennets have a treadmill too so that is going to be very helpful! The work is going super great! We were able to find five new investigators this week! We had the highest teaching and finding week then any other, so things are looking up here in Sandpoint Idaho! Love ya!

81st week in Spokane

There's not a whole lot of new and exciting things that happened this week, Sam Palmer is still good to go for this Saturday! Things have been going great with his teaching. We spoke this week in Clark Fork, and that was really fun, I like speaking in front of people. Elder Van Dyke talked about prayer and faith, it was really good. I spoke on the Atonement and the restoration and tied it into missionary work, it was fun. A cool thing that happened this week though is that we tracted into the Methodist pastor and he invited us in and we talked for a while and at the end we sang “I know that my redeemer lives” and he invited us to come to a multi-faith music festival to sing there, and that's next week, it will be a good chance to get our faces out there and also to get our testimonies out there, especially since Clark Fork is extremely anti! And I mean actively anti! So that's gonna be good. Well, this week's is short, but that's what I got! love ya!

80th week in Spokane

Conference was awesome!! To prepare for it I looked at what is going to be going on in my life in the next six months and then wrote down five questions accordingly. Then, during conference, I had with me two different colored pens, one black and one blue. With the black pen I wrote all the things said that stuck out to me and with the blue pen I wrote all the answers to those questions, and other things that I need to work on and apply. It was awesome! I was able to receive a lot of direction and instruction that I can now apply and work on in the next six months! As far as missionary work goes, we had four investigators watch at least one session of conference. Sam Palmer is doing awesome! We had a really good lesson with him this week that was really neat. His mom was there and she was able to share her testimony about the gospel. We are praying that Sam's decision to be baptized will bring them closer together in the gospel and help to reactivate the family. Well, I think that's really about it as far as the highlights go. I've got a question though, does anyone know why Elder Hales didn't speak this conference?