Tuesday, December 25, 2012

blessings

Today I am experiencing what it is like to send emails with an iPad. It's pretty sweeeet! Todd Kanekoa has provided us with the devices to email with today. Glad to finally hear from jordan and I look forward to getting to hear from him more next may! The News this week is that Oscar has gone AWOL. We haven't been able to get in contact with him at all. No baptism this Saturday. But as always happens in missionary work if you're trying to be a good boy, when one door closes 2 or more others will open up. Yesterday at church while all of the people we were trying to get to church that day didn't show up, 7-8 non-members whom we didn't invite, did show up! We've got some good stuff happening in the area. One of those being that our branch had the highest attendance it's ever had yesterday, with 140 people at sacrament meeting. Well I'm going to keep it short today. Merry Christmas! Talk to you tomorrow!

Monday, December 17, 2012

Live Righteously

Hey Everybody! Wow, I got a feeling you'd experience this at some time during your mission, Ma and Pa. I'm glad you're safe, we'll all keep you in our prayers. As far as Christmas calls go, presidents given the ok to talk to all family, so we don't have to worry about that. Be it group skype or conference call, lets get this figured out before I get on to email next monday. I'll have to find a members house to check it at since the libraries will most definitely be closed. Just let me know what phone number I need to call or what skype I need to call. Thanks a bunch! I got Brian's package the other day and opened it up! Thanks Hermano, I also received the 2 from heather, one with goodies in a tin, and the other with a wrapped present, the goodies went in the fridge and the present under the tree. an OYM is an open your mouth. When you talk to a nonmember that you've never talked to before and share a quick gospel message.
Its been a pretty good week in vancouver. We've been meeting with all our buddies. Oscar is on fire. We left a Libro de Mormon for his mom, and she had already started reading it before we came back to teach her for the first time. He also came to church on Sunday and really enjoyed it. We kind of had a road block this past weekend because Elder Judd got the flu. We had some pretty important appointments to get to so we arranged an exchange so I was able to go out and see some of our people. Luckily he was all better by sunday morning. Aside from a little bit of stomach pain.
Raul and Perla, a new couple we've been teaching, are progressing pretty well. They've been reading out of the book of mormon and really enjoying it. The next step is to get them out to church, they didn't make it this past sunday.
I don't know if you heard about the shooting in connecticut. I think it was fitting that our priesthood lesson yesterday was out of the "Ensenanzas de los Presidentes de la Iglesia: George Albert Smith" manual, last chapter "Righteous Living in Perilous Times" The class made me think back to a scripture I'd read recently. With a little bit of investigative work I found it. It is in Romans twelth chapter twenty-first verse, where it says,
21 Be not overcome of evil, but aovercome evil with good.
The best thing we can do in the "Perilous Times" we live in is live righteously. In so doing, we overcome evil with good. Just adding to the thousands of reasons to be a full time servant of the Lord in this time. I'm so glad to be on a mission right now. Its the best blessing I could ever have. Especially during Christmas time, when theres such an increased energy to the work. It is His work, I know its true. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, and I look forward to talking to you next Tuesday.
-Elder Derek S. Partridge

Monday, December 3, 2012

Traditions

The hispanics have a nice little tradition for Christmas. The night before January 6th in preparation for the Wise men coming through there town on there journey, they leave some grass outside for the camels to eat, and they each leave one of there shoes so the wise men can leave gifts in them. I thought this was better than the fat guy in red who comes down the chimney. I told a couple of families about the 12 days of Christmas, and they thought they'd give it a try.
Well this week has been pretty good, we've been focusing on finding the elect. I guess one highlight would be sunday night. We didn't have an investigator coming to the christmas devotional, so we went to the appointments we had that night. Our 8 o clock appointment was a man named Alex. He had invited us to come back when we tracted into him a couple of days earlier. We had just finished fasting for help in finding the elect so we could meet our mission goal. We said a prayer in the car that if he wasn't home that Heavenly Father would guide us to someone who would receive us. We got to his apartment door and it was obvious nobody was home. We gave it a knock but immediately went to talking about what we would do as backup. We looked around and saw a woman carrying some groceries with her kids to their apartment. The first thought was "you tracted these apartments 3 days ago, you probably already talked to her." but after we just felt that we should go ask if she needed help. We introduced ourselves, we hadn't talked to her before. She recognized us as "Mormons." We told her we were sharing a movie about the birth and life of Jesus Christ, and that it was really good to bring the Christmas spirit, and asked if we could share it with her family. She started saying she had to cook dinner, but then said actually, she did have time, and we could all watch it while she got the food ready. So we got in and were able to share the video. They invited us to come back. Just another confirmation that the lord guides his missionaries!
I hope everybody has a good week!
-Elder Partridge