Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Part Member Family

Well lets see here. It has been a pretty good week, our Pday is on Tuesday this week because of the temple trip. So we went to The Columbia river temple this morning with our zone. It was pretty cool! Its nice to get a trip to Tricities in every once in a while to stop by the mission office and say hi, and to go to Far West Books, which is our equivalent of Deseret Book.

We've gotten back on track with Ludy. Things are going good we've moved their baptismal date to Feb. 11th. We met with her a couple times last week.

We found a PMF (Part Member Family) That nobody ever told us about. We found their son named Brian when we were at somebody else's house. He's 14 years old, he said Oh you're the missionaries! You used to come to my house like 2 years ago. So we were like, Oh, where do you live? And he told us where and everything, and after finding we had the wrong house number and asking around we found him. He wasn't in our teaching records for some reason, but we found his family and started talking to them to find out, the mom, and 2 sons had all been baptized a couple years ago! Her current husband is a Nonmember so we're hoping to get all of them coming to church and After the appointment, we checked the ward list, and there they were, in the records with the current address and everything! We met with them again this week and gave them several copies of the Book of Mormon, because they had lost there's when they moved. There son Alex is Solid! He's sixteen now, but when he was 11 he got half way through the BoM before they moved and lost them and he's super excited to get started again, I can tell he'll be helping his little brothers and sisters out. Rosa, the mom is excited to start reading again too, we had a lesson about scripture study and we told them if they'd read as a family daily they'd have more peace in their home. Its going to be awesome to get them activated and coming to mutual and stuff.

Well thats about it, Have a great week!

-Elder Partridge


Monday, January 23, 2012

snowcaves and zone conference


January 23, 2012-Well this week has been a little different! I started driving at the beginning of the transfer; I think I forgot to tell you that. So I've gotten the area down good. If you've been watching weather reports for the Yakima valley and Tricities, you'll know that starting Wednesday, we got a ton of snow! It kind of hindered the work a little bit. We weren't supposed to drive on Wednesday, so we shoveled the white's driveway, and begun work on a little snow cave for their grandkids. After that we went to our Lunch with President Bingham, and from there we walked to visit a couple people. Thursday we had Zone Conference in Selah, a little bit past Yakima. They told us it was still on and just to drive carefully. So I drove in freezing rain like 50 miles, it was pretty intense, but we got their safely and had a good Zone Conference, and It snowed more while we were there! So at the end of zone conference we went out and everyone helped get ice and snow off of the cars, and we all drove home, carefully.

As far as investigators go, Angela is on date for Baptism the first Saturday in March, We met with them about twice this week and it went well. We just have to keep resolving their concerns. I got a picture with them out in the snow.

John Trevino, I think I told you about Connie. She's a former investigator that we started meeting with again; she's in her 70's. She believes Joseph Smith to have been a prophet and the Book of Mormon to be the word of god, and she won't be baptized because she was baptized in the Catholic Church. So we're going to have to figure that out. John is her husband, we hadn't talked with him until this week, when we went to visit Connie and he was the only one home. We had an interesting conversation, in which he told us a couple stories about his life, and then he related the Mormon Pioneer history to us, told us Joseph Smith was a prophet, and said he doesn't believe the catholic church anymore, because they enslaved his ancestors to mine gold for the Vatican, and told us to tell his nephew, Jorge Cortez, from the branch presidency, that he wants a ride to church, and he wants to become a Mormon. So that was pretty awesome! I look forward to telling more later!



Well the bad news, we’ve been having trouble getting over to Ludy's house. She didn't come to church this week, her baptism was supposed to be this Saturday but we're going to have to push the date back a couple weeks and try again!

Well other than that, it’s been a fun snowy week! Take Care everyone!

Besos y Abrazos!

Elder Partridge

Monday, January 16, 2012

super great week

Another super great week! We've visited a lot of people and found some new ones.

Ludy is doing good. She has been working at Jack in the Box a lot of days from afternoon until late, so we've been having to meet with her earlier this week. Jose has been diligently trying to read the Book of Mormon, but he's 9 and its a little hard for him to get it, especially since he has no religious background really. We are going to get him the Book of Mormon story book with the pictures though and that should help. They came to Church yesterday!!! So that was good, we're winding in towards their baptismal date, so we're trying to teach them as much as possible. Eduardo has come with us for most lessons so that's good. They're well on their way!

Pedro and Isela, we finally got to meet with them again, because Pedro's been busy with the job, stuff has been coming up a lot so they still haven't been to church, but we're going to try to get them a fellow-shipper and that should help.

The Rivera's I haven't mentioned in awhile. Half of them were on date for last month and half weren't, they didn't ever come to church so they've all fallen off date for baptism, and they aren't really progressing at all. They still welcome us in their home to read the Book of Mormon with them, they've got some work that needs to be done. I think getting them out to some activities will help a lot. They need a big social conversion, before they'll start coming to church, but we're not giving up on them!

Odilia, is another I haven't mentioned in awhile. She was on date for this month, but she went out of town for Christmas, and now she's home, and now that she's got a job, she's too good for the gospel. Whenever we go over, she tells her kids to tell us she's busy. So that's kinda sad. Oh well, we might drop them, and leave the record for missionaries to try back in a couple months.

Luis Velasquez, was also on date, and he's disappeared. He basically told us he wasn't to ready to get baptized and he wanted to do it at a later date, and then he never met with us again. We still call him ever so often, but he never answers. And we were meeting with him at a member's house so we don't know where he lives. So hmmm, maybe he'll turn up eventually.

Apolo and Angela, are progressing pretty well, we told them to pray and select a baptismal date, so this week we'll see how that went. Apolo has bad eyesight, so we got him the BoM on CD. So that'll be good.

So we've had a good week. On Friday, we had a barbecue, burger party and invited the sunnyside spanish elders. It was pretty awesome. I also included some pictures of our trailer park dog buddies, and a picture of me and Toby, from this morning. (note the haircut) Well thats about it.

Have a great week.




Monday, January 9, 2012

The field is white

Alright, Well it has been quite a good week. We've seen our increased finding efforts the past 2 weeks transfer over to an increased amount of lessons this week! It all starts with finding. Another reason for our success is that we taught a lesson about member missionary work in priesthood, and we got some referrals from that. So that has been good. Transfers are this week! I finished my first transfer in the mission field! Of course, I'm staying put, because I have another transfer until Elder Bao will be done training me, and then I'll likely stay in grandview after that, while Elder Bao get transferred elsewhere. Well one of our zone leaders, Elder Bejarano is getting transferred out, so we'll miss him. We're going to yakima in a couple minutes to play some basketball and wish him well! This week we had Zone leader exchanges, so he actually got to come with me and Elder Bao and meet some of our investigators, so that was nice that we got to do that before he gets transferred. One of these pictures is of Elder Bao and I outside the church with him, after the exchange. We'll miss him.

Well aside from that we had some more progress with Ludy, and Jose. Ludy is Eduardo's sister who lives 2 trailers down from him. She's the one we started teaching last week. And Jose is her son. she's a single mother. Anyways, committed her to get baptized on January 28 with her son Jose! Its going to be really awesome because Eduardo will be the one baptizing her! We also started teaching Ilse, another one of Eduardo's sisters, and her family. She has a husband, and 3 kids. Edvin, her oldest is 14, and eduardo brought him to church last week. They seem pretty interested, we met with them twice this week, and we'll be trying to put them on date for baptism pretty soon. Thats all for Eduardo's family tree this week.

Pedro and Isela, have been super busy all week, so we haven't been able to meet with him, but Pedro got not 1, but 2 jobs! So thank you for all of your prayers for him. I included a picture of them, 2 of their daughters, Elder Bao and I at the Christmas party.









We met a lot of really nice people this week, so hopefully we'll be able to see them progress good as well. Well thats all for this week! Bu bye!

Monday, January 2, 2012

Eduardo

Andele Pues... This week was super good! Well I gotta tell you more about Eduardo. He's doing great! So of course last week we had his confirmation on Christmas. Well this week we heard from him and he told us his sister Ludy, who attended the baptism, wanted to start taking lessons from us and be baptized, and so does her son Jose who is 9 years old. They both have seen a great change in Eduardo and want to have that for themselves also. Eduardo is like one of the people in Lehi's dream, who takes of the fruit of the tree of life, and then wants to share it with everyone so that they can experience the great happiness of living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Its really fantastic. So basically every time we met with Eduardo this week, and when he came to church, he brought a friend or someone in his family along with him. He's really being a great missionary. and this sunday he received the Aaronic Priesthood, and blessed the sacrament at church. He's really progressing great.

Pedro and Isela have been out of town most week, so we're excited to get to meet with them again now that they're back. They're both really open to everything.

Did you see the church's new Apple Commercial? It made me question my testimony a bit... I don't think President Monson endorsed this... afterall, as Elder Hundley just said, "Apple inc. is the great and abominable church of the Devil." Hehehehe anyways they have the new videos about the Birth of Jesus there and they're pretty cool.

Oh by the way, Happy new year! Feliz ano nuevo! It is now 2012. Its going to be a great year! New years eve was pretty cool, we ate dinner and visited some people then we had to be home early, so we just kind of chilled and then went to bed around 10:15. Pues, I'm running out of things to write! Thats all that was really notable this week. I guess have a great week and a happy new year.

-Elder Partridge