Elder Ballard, Elder Maynes and Elder Risenmay

Hello everyone!

Thanks for the letters and the emails again. They are always appreciated.

This week was awesome! We had a couple of slow days but that's ok, it happens every now and then. We had some miracles happen again as we were visiting with a part-member family this week. They opened up to us about some struggles they have been going through and then they committed to come to church and they actually did. We had one of his member co-workers come to church with him to fellowship him.

Now the big highlight for the week was on saturday when Elder Ballard, Elder Maynes and Elder Risenmay came and talked to all of the missionaries in the Washington Kennewick Mission. They talked a lot about working hard and setting goals to help push us. It was really cool to shake their hands and to listen to the things they felt inspired to tell us. Afterwards we took a big group photo and then headed to another stake center to have lunch. It was a lot of fun to see a bunch of old companions again and other people from my MTC district.

I just want to say how grateful I am for the gospel. It gives so much direction and comfort to know where the straight and narrow path is and to know that Christ always has his hand extended when we fall off. The Atonement and repentance are wonderful things that allow us to fix things from the past and gives us strength and determination to do whats right despite difficult times. The Book of Mormon is true, there is no doubt in my mind that it is true and because I know its true then we have the true church and a prophet is leading and guiding it today.

I hope that you all have a great week and go out and talk to someone you could share the gospel with!

Elder Young

Miracles

Hello everyone!

I hope that everyone has had as good a week as I had. Thank you for the letters and support. I'm always grateful to hear how things are going.

This week has been really good. Full of Miracles! So a couple of saturday's ago we got a call from someone asking if we would be able to come over. At first I was really confused because I thought that I didn't know the person or where they lived. We had an idea of where it was because he told us the street and the number for his trailer. The thing was that there are 2 trailer parks on that street and we went to the wrong one at first. We ended up calling him again and then we figured out which one it was. It turns out he was someone we had talked to before and he wanted to start changing his life around since his marriage is going through a rough patch. We had felt impressed to give him a blessing because he had been sick for the last few days and then we left. We came back that saturday again and he was all better and excited to listen. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and when we got to the picture of Christ being baptized, he said he wanted to do that. Long story short, we put him on date and then he also came to church with 3 out of 4 of his kids. Also yesterday we had a little extra time to knock a few doors and the second house that we went to, told us that their son had been wanting to go to our church, they just didn't know anyone so they wouldn't go. She told us that they would come to church on sunday and we are really hoping and praying that they do. The Lord is hastening his work and it's amazing to be a part of it!

 Right now our mission is doing a "40 day fast" to sanctify ourselves to be more in-tune with the spirit. So what we did is we started it off with a normal fast and at the end of that we write down things that come to mind that may be distractions or things we would like to work on and then you pray for the strength to work on those things in the morning and report it to heavenly father at night. I feel like it will benefit the mission and myself a lot as we turn over all of our "weapons of rebellion" and allow the savior to hasten the work. Sometimes there are things we don't realize that keep the spirit from being really strong with us and it takes some effort to get rid of them.

We are trying to work with the members more. We have been meeting with more than just the people in the Hermiston ward to find more referrals. We actually had a dinner with a few people at a members house. There was a couple part member families there and we actually got a return appointment with one of them. She is an old investigator but when she sat down to eat, she asked why we hadn't been by. I guess that showed she still wants to learn some more which will be good.

I just want to say to all those that are on the fence about serving a mission. It will be the best thing you ever do. You will learn so much about everything, about yourself, how to work with others, sometimes a new language and so much more. And best of all you get to help others have the same happiness and joy that you get from living the gospel. You will not regret serving a mission. Also to those that may not be able to serve right now, help the missionaries in anyway you can. When they ask you to think of someone and that name comes to your head, just say it. There is a reason that name popped in you mind.

Go out and share the gospel in anyway you can and you will be blessed.

Elder Young

Very fast week

Hello Everybody!

Thanks for the letters and emails for those that sent some. I would love to hear from the rest of you as well.

This week was pretty good. We are starting to stop tracting now. We felt that it was super important that we start working with the members more despite the challenges. We actually saw miracles happen. We were able to exceed a lot of our goals and had some really good lessons. We also met with a few members of other wards to get them thinking about people they can share they gospel with that speak spanish. Hopefully in time we will have more work than we can handle.

So this past week I have been studying about the articles of faith since Elder Perry talked about them and it has been really cool to see the scriptures behind our beliefs and then at the same time feel the spirit confirming the truthfulness of it. It has helped this week as people bring up concerns and it ends up what I had been studying about that morning or the day before. I'm only about halfway done with the 3rd one but I still love studying them. As I have been studying the Atonement, it has given me a deeper appreciation for the Savior. I know that he suffered for more than just our sins but for our afflictions, sicknesses, pains, sorrows, everything so that he would know exactly how we feel and how to best help us overcome them. The Atonement more than just a passive thing, it allows us to overcome trials and tribulations and overcome the natural man.

This week went by so fast that it feels like it was yesterday that I was writing a letter. Something interesting that we ran into this week was as we were knocking on a couple of doors trying some potential investigators, we came across a very less active spanish member. At first he wasn't very warm to us but after a few questions we couldn't get him to stop talking. He had left the church because he got offended (don't ever throw away your salvation because someone made a silly comment) and then he told us that he baptizes himself every time he takes a shower or a bath (not sure how that works). We were super confused by that and how someone could fall so far away. It's like what our mission president has told us. Don't open the door a crack for satan because he will fill it and open it wide.

Remember everyone that the Lord takes care your family when you take care of someone else's. Try to share the gospel with everyone you come in contact with and you will be blessed for it. Oh and help the missionaries serving in your ward. They will really appreciate it!

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Young

GENERAL CONFERENCE

Hello everybody!

Thank you for the letters and emails this week. I really appreciate being able to see how things are going on outside of the mission.

This week was kind of slow but we still worked hard. They are really suggesting that we work with members more to move the work forward faster. We kind of have a unique situation here since we only have 2 or 3 active spanish members and almost no leadership. We have talked with a few members (english and spanish) to see what we can do to help the group get reactivated and have a more concerted effort with the stake. Our group covers all of Hermiston and Umatilla so we need help from the other wards to find the hispanics in other parts of the city. We have a plan to get started and hopefully we will see some results as we put it into action.

Conference was amazing this weekend! We watched most of the sessions at the church but we did watch one at an investigators house. He said he felt like it answered some questions and that he needed to study the scriptures more (saturday afternoon session). I was impressed at how much they talked specifically about member missionary work. Right now I'm wishing I would have helped the missionaries out more at home because now I know what it feels like to be out here. The nature of missionary work is changing. The members have to get more involved and we have to help them get more involved. I also loved how they would take simple things like a couple of the 10 commandments and go deeper with it and apply it to the work. We are living in scary times but we have the hope of the gospel to lead and guide us.

The language is coming along still. It gets easier to learn, speak, listen and read every day. The gift of tongues is real. There is no way that I could have learned a new language this fast on my own. The Lord blesses his missionaries everyday.

I just want to say that I love being a missionary. It's true that there are hard times and people have their agency to accept or reject the message of the gospel but I still love them anyway. I have definitely learned that there are good things in everyone and the gospel can bring it out of them. I know that the people in the church are not perfect but that doesn't mean that the gospel isn't. We can't allow ourselves to choose to reject the Savior because of the silly mistakes of others. I have seen too many people throw away the blessings of regular church attendance because of an offense. I know this is the true church. God's kingdom is on the Earth again and we are a part of it. We (each one of us) should be on the front lines trying to build it up where we stand. Its like what Elder Uchtdorf has said "Lift where you stand."

I hope that you all have a great week and that you see the Lord's hand in your life.

Elder Young

A great week and a new companion

Hello everybody!

I hope that you have had a great week and everything went well.

Our week here was really good. We taught quite few lessons and we had 1 investigator at church. We have been teaching him for a little while but with a space in between because he some surgeries going on. We had an awesome lesson with him this week about the some of the commandments. We were talking about prophets and we were showing him a picture of President Monson and then we talked about how if he knew that Joesph Smith was a prophet, that meant his successors were prophets also. We he saw Joseph Smith's picture he kind of got excited asked if he was the one that was visited by God and Jesus Christ. He is our top progressing investigator right now. He has to do dialysis 3 times a week because of the surgeries earlier in the year and he has tubes in his chest that can't be submerged for a couple of months.

I really enjoy my new companion Elder Doman. We have a lot of the same goals and personality traits. We both feel that this companionship is inspired because we had pretty much instant unity. He came from an english area in wenachee so he had 6 weeks to learn spanish and then 6 weeks to forget it but he is learning really quickly. Tonight we are going to eat with a less active member and she said she is going to make some hot salsa to help him learn even faster. I took him to someone that always really hard to understand just to give him something to check his progress off of. The funny thing is that person is still hard for me to understand but it has gotten better. Elder Doman is from Utah and just graduated High School in June. Also we have the same birthday, just a year apart.

I'm super excited for General Conference this weekend! I love being able to listen and read the words of the prophet and apostles. I hope that you are getting prepared to listen this weekend! They have been inspired to speak about things that are important for us today and we are ready to listen with the spirit, then we will be taught so much more by the spirit.

Speaking of apostles, we are going to be having one of the apostles here on oct 26! We are super excited for it! We haven't been told who it is going to be but thats ok because they are all great men of god.

The weather here has been pretty rainy and cool. Still nothing like the Kansas storms. The days are getting shorter and shorter. It starts getting pretty dark around 7:45 and then people don't want to meet because they think its late. Hopefully as the harvest winds down we get busier.

I hope that you all see miracles this week and that missionary opportunities present themselves.

Elder Young

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Transfers and a miracle week

Hello everybody!

Thank you for the letters this week, I always appreciate it. I hope that you have had just as good a week as I had.

This week has been pretty good and we also got our transfer calls on saturday. I'm staying and Elder Hall is going towards Othello. We are really sure exactly where its at, they just said the wards and zone that he will be in. I will be getting Elder Doman as a companion. He just came in the mission 6 weeks ago so I'm a step-dad now and will be finishing his training. He also went to the Mexico MTC so that is pretty cool. It will be fun to help train a missionary.

We definitely saw some miracles this week. We haven't been finding very many new investigators this month but then the last 3 days we found 4. They were mostly people that had been potential investigators for a while but it had been difficult to find a time to meet with them again. Also there were 6 investigators at church. It seemed like they just kept coming and coming. We were super surprised that there were that many there. We were also able to teach 21 lessons which it has been hard just to get 15 or 16.

Translating was pretty rough yesterday. It was a new couple to the ward and they had most of their talks written out or quoting from articles but the thing that made it really hard was that they spoke really fast. I felt bad for the few people that had to listen. Hopefully they were able to get something out of it. That was a real test of our translating skills.

I hope you all have a great week and I hope that you are able to see the little miracles in your life.

Elder Young

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Hello Everybody!

Its hard to believe that 8 months have already gone by!

So last week I forgot to mention a miracle that happened. An old investigator came to church last week and was talking to the bishop after sacrament meeting. Come to find out her long time live in boyfriend moved back to Mexico so she can now get baptized. The bishop challenged her to have the lessons in her less-active daughters house to maybe try to get them reactivated too. We were talking with her yesterday and she really understands the importance of living correctly now and receiving the ordinances of salvation. I am hoping that she will continue strong and be a strength for the spanish group.

This week was a little long as people were still busy harvesting and didn't have the time or energy to meet with us but we didn't have some good lessons. We are pretty much teaching the whole Delafuente family or someone they are related to. There are 4 daughters with their spouses or boyfriends that aren't members and we are either trying to reactivate them and/or teach them the missionary lessons. Hopefully we will be able to see some progress soon as they continue to read in the Book of Mormon.

Last night we had a pretty crazy storm. We had just finished dinner and then the power went out. We finished up with a spiritual thought and then left. As we were leaving, the wind was picking up and throwing tons of dust and dirt in the air (the soil is really sandy here) and we could hardly see as we were driving. Branches and twigs kept blowing across the road as we drove to our next appointment. Just as we got in the house, it started down pouring and then it rained for a little while longer but not too bad after that. It reminded me of Kansas storms but not nearly as long.

Something that I have learned here is that serving in a calling is just like a mission. We serve because the Lord has asked us to and try to magnify the calling we are given because we love the Lord. Our success isn't based on numbers or stats but rather on our commitment to serve our Savior in the calling he has given us. The Lord has his reasons for the callings he gives to us and promises us strength to be able to complete the tasks he has given us, we just have to do it his way.

I want you all to know that I know the church is true because I know the Book of Mormon is true. There is a prophet on the earth today and I know he has the authority to receive guidance and revelation for the world. I know we can receive revelation for ourselves also, we just have to be willing to act on the things that we learn.

I hope you all have a great week and always be looking for the Lord's hand in everything and you will see many more miracles.

Elder Young

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