September 22

Hey!

 

Another really fast week and this week is looking like it will be much the same. This is the basic plans that we have this week

 

Monday - Pday

Tuesday - Exchanges with the AP's

Wednesday - Temple Trip (way excited to see the changes there) and begin exchange with Lincoln City

Thursday - All day in Lincoln City (one day and two nights at the Coast)

Friday - District Meeting in Tillamook and end exchange with Lincoln City

 

It should be a great week!

 

This past week was great though. Elder Lee and I have focused our efforts on finding people. We have been trying many different ways to finds and it has been incredible as we have seen that take place. On Wednesday of this past week Elder Lee asked me if the Stake had ever done anything with the YSA's, up to this point the YSA's have been going to a Ward in Beaverton but because of the mission split that has been thrown off because coordinating councils were changed as well so they were in limbo. I told him that I didn't know of anything and they we started thinking of ideas of how to get a YSA group going here in Forest Grove. On Thursday night there was a Preisthood Leadership meeting that we were asked to attend and help to train the Ward Mission Leaders, which went fairly well, but while we were there we decided to talk with President Richardson (Stake President) and see what the Stake was planning on doing with the YSA's.  Long story made short they had never really thought of using the missionaries to build up the YSA or thought of forming a group but he was excited about the idea. He asked us to get in contact with President Samuelian and see if we could begin working with YSA. When we called president he got really excited, he has worked in the YSA program for most of his church life. While we were still on the phone with him he ran up to his office and wrote on his white board "Areas to open on Oct 14 - Forest Grove YSA Group." He asked us to type a proposal and give it to President Richardson and see if that is what he had planned. So we got it all tyoed up and set up an appointment for Sunday. President Richardson asked his counselers to be there and we came in and they started to share a bunch of ideas that they had talked about in their PEC meeting. Interestingly enough all of their ideas were in line with the proposal that we had typed up to give to them. Anyway that was a really long way of saying that Elder Lee and I got ourselves assigned to work with the YSA's and how we are going to create a YSA group and eventually a Branch. One cool thing about this is now I get to work with President Stoddard.

Things with Kindel on Monday went really well. We had dinner and then we gave her a hardback copy of the Book of Mormon and a Family Proc and Restoration Pamphlet. Her Dad was also there and was very interested in that. She said that it isn't the religion that she would choose but she isn't opposed to learning about it. I think that it will be a very slow process but she is friends with several members and we ahve made them aware that she has had us over a few times and asked them to just reach out to her and be good friends. The Janeway family who she knows lost a baby this summer due to SCID's disease and they are having a 5k fun run and Sister Janeway is going to invite her to come run that. So there is a lot of good fellowship and hopefully it will go somewhere. If she does end up runnung the 5k we will be there, Sister Janeway signed us up to run. It is a sad but really cool story, they turned the experiance into an awesome missionary opportunity. Jordan was in and out of the hospital for over 6 months and durring that entire time the Janeway's would get on a blog everyday and talk about the miracles that they had seen and how being members had blessed their lives. Banks is a small town so a large part of the population followed the blog through the entire process so that is why we are going to be at the race, finding people to teach.

 

So it turns out that it is a very good thing that I ordered a new suit, Friday my suit pants ripped in a way that they couldn't be fixed so I am now down to one suit and it is on its last leg. The pants on the suit that I have left have a hole in the back of my leg from my wallet. I got an e-mail and my new suit has shipped so I should have it in about a week, it takes a while to get from India.

 

Thanks for all that you do for me! Love You All!!

 

Dustin