Big News

Hey Family! Big News this week!

For Starters, I don't know if you've been reading your church news, (I know I haven't) They just announced the new missions and mission presidents for this July. They announced 58 new missions! How nuts is that? Bringing the number of missions worldwide from 340 something to 400 something. Among those is our very own Vancouver Washington Mission! The changes will be made in July, along with new mission presidents, for Kennewick and Vancouver.

Also, I'm being transferred! I'm opening a new area...... The Yakima South Spanish area! Ok, so actually the area is being divided. I will be in the south part.... TRAINING A NEW MISSIONARY, and The Zoneleader 4-ship, Elders Calder, Swenson, Diaz, and his trainee will be covering North Yakima. Two Spanish sister missionaries will be covering Terrace Heights Moxee, and Union Gap, making 8 missionaries in our branch!

This is where were finally starting to really see the effects of President Monson's announcement. We're getting 13 spanish missionaries and only 1 is going home, so... 6 new areas, (one of those for sisters) and it looks like we're beefing up the big branches first. They got another companionship in vancouver, and one in kennewick also among others.

I'm excited to be with an 8 man spanish district. Also, just this week, several golden investigators, in the soon to be yakima south area have come out of the wood work and shown up at church. Its going to be sweet! ME and my soon to be hijo are gonna have a super good transfer, this is also going to be a huge strength to the branch. Its going to be awesome! I don't want to keep Brian Waiting so I'll send this out right now!

-Elder Derek Partridge

Work Smart

its been a good week! I think the challenge we've had isn't finding investigators, but finding ones that will progress and keep commitments. It made me think of an mtc devotional a long time ago, from Elder D. Todd Christofferson. He told us something to the effect of, "on your mission never hesitate to stop and evaluate the effectiveness of what you're doing."

It made me think, because it seems though as we have put in a lot of effort, we haven't seen it be as effective as we would like, and so this week we're going to talk about Finding, and finding effectively; working smart, not just hard. I think that’s going to be good advice for the rest of my life.

We did have a great lesson with the Pimentel family, which consists of Manuel, a 28 year old, convert of 3 years, got back from a mission 2 months ago, solid. His 2 nonmember brothers and there wives and kids. We had a very spiritual lesson, and basically established that we're here to help them enjoy the blessings of the gospel, so we made some headway there. Manuel has been fun to go on exchanges with. It makes him miss his mission, I feel bad for him. He is a star, though. Playing primary in piano has been good. I've been enjoying and slowly improving. I've pretty much mastered mi padre celestial me ama, with the right hand even though it has 3 flats. so I'm doing good!

I'm going to have to start up piano lessons with Sister Paul after the mission...

Well that’s all I have for you, have a great week

-Elder Partridge

Doctrine of Christ

It has been an awesome week in Yakima. We had zone conference on Tuesday. It was awesome to be able to see President and Sister Greer. They talked about the doctrine of Christ. It was good to get fired up to go do more work. On Wednesday we went to Selah to learn more about family history from a lady in one of the wards there. They want us to teach the high priests in the branch. That would be really good, but also a daunting task. I guess its kind of hard to get correct information from Mexico. I got some more time to clean some stuff up on our line. A couple duplicates here and there. I've actually kind of enjoyed figuring that stuff out. Elizabeth Buxton had the wrong father on there a couple times. The one that was on there was about 80 when she was born, so I knew that couldn't be right. She had a lot of different parents listed, I went ahead and cleaned them all out..

In other news we've been doing a lot of work and going out with people from Elders Quorum this week. We've found a couple new families in Moxee and here in Yakima. So we're excited! Well everyone, Have a great week!

-Elder D. Partridge

Miracles

Dear Family,

Glad to hear Ma and Pa are back safe.

The miracles haven't ceased in Yakima. We've seen an awesome week. Concha continues to progress and we've found a ton of new people. I've also been working into my new call as district leader. District meeting went pretty well, I also had the opportunity to go on an exchange with Elder Skeen, have a District Comp Study on member missionary work, and I interviewed Angela Coombs for Baptism on Friday night. I pretty much got to experience everything in week 1.

The exchange went well, It helped me to get a feel for the 2nd ward area a little more. I feel like they putting a huge emphasis on working with members would be good for our whole district. I thought about it and we went over for comp study to study sections from Chapter 9. I've kind of thought about showing or telling members about mormon.org for spiritual thoughts after dinner, so that they can use it as a resource to do missionary work. I might be mistaken but it seems like a lot of members don't really have a full knowledge of what Mormon.org is and what it has to offer. I think this would be really good. You should all check out mormon.org. It is good!

As far as work in our own area goes, we've been teaching a lot and finding alot, and trying to sift them to find the elect. We've found a lot of very good people, that are very accepting and so I think we'll put a big focus on those ones. We continue to be blessed and see miracles!

Elder Partridge

4panionship

First Week in Yakima, was Awesome! I'm here with my companions, Elder Diaz, Elder Evans, and Elder Calder.
3/4 of us got here on Wednesday. So Elder Diaz and I were doubled in basically. One bonus we have that the 4panionship in the past hasn't had is that we have 2 cars. Before 2 elders would be dropped off in one part of town to walk around and get work done, and find their way back home while the others had the car. But our mission has received more cars, so Elder Diaz and I are blessed to have a brand new Chevy Cruze! Also, with the transfer I got called as District Leader. Our district is made up of us 4 and the Yakima 2nd ward Elders.

Well day 1 in Yakima was sweet, after a long drive, and getting settled in the apartment, Elder Evans gave us a list of former investigators, pmf's and, try backs to go visit. We went out to work, the results of day 1 was 5 new investigators, 3 of those with a baptismal date.

We had an awesome experience this night. We got to this apartment complex. We had no name, just an apartment number. We were walking there when Elder Diaz kicked something that went sliding across the icy ground. We picked it up to find it was a woman's wallet/purse. We opened it up to look for an address. The driver’s license had a wapato address on it, we kept looking and found a bill with the address to that apartment complex, to number a5. That was the apartment we were going to! We went there and delivered the wallet, to Concha, she was very grateful, we told her who we were and she invited us to come back the next day! That next day we taught her the Restoration, she was really excited to learn more and said she felt like we were sent from God, with the purse incident and all. We'd have to agree with that, we know the Lord provided us with that opportunity!

We've found some other interesting new investigators. Marcos and Isabel, who had been going to an English ward and loving it even though they couldn't understand anything.

Ricardo, a guy in his 20's who is going to college to study, engineering, computer programming, microbiology, and quantum physics and another couple who investigated the church in Idaho, who we found tracting. We've just seen a lot of great things happening. The branch is large, the largest in the mission, It very well could go ward, with a little bit more work. I unofficially received a call as primary pianist yesterday at church. They gave me a book and the song they needed me to play next week. 3 days a week, we wake up at 6 to go to the church and exercise, I guess I could take 5-10 minutes out of that to practice. But overall, it’s been an awesome week! The lord has just been opening doors left and right. We’re excited to get a great start to a successful transfer! I hope all have a good week!

-Elder Partridge

 

 

 

Yakima

Hey everyone! With the news of last week, I believe I forgot to inform you that transfers were coming up. I'm going to Yakima tomorrow. We got the call on Saturday. As it always is, I'm not happy to be leaving vancouver, but always excited to get to know a new area, and take another step in my mission. I'll be serving with 3 other elders. Elder Diaz, my companion, and Elders Evans and Gray, the two zone leaders. I was companions with Evans in Boardman, and I was in Elder Gray's district back in Grandview, so that will be cool. It will also be very cool to serve in the Yakima branch. Its the biggest branch in our mission. I'm really excited to go and hit the ground running there.

I'm going to miss vancouver though. I've been here 7 months. This is home. I will definitely have to come back and visit, soon. I promised everyone I would. And have had several people offer me a room, should I return. This was a very good week. We put a big focus on getting investigators to progress. We've done a lot of finding, but it had been hard getting people to keep commitments. As we did this we saw a big success. Raul and Perla, whom we've been teaching for a couple of weeks now, had accepted everything and the book of mormon well and were even willing to be baptized, the only problem was, they wanted to come to church first and see how it was. That really wasn't the problem, the problem being, though they told us they wanted to come see the church, they never did. Every week they would end up not showing up. We'd call them and they wouldn't return our calls on sunday, and then they would recommit to coming to church. This week we just talked to them about how keeping the commitments are steps that build our faith and prepare for baptism and we got them to set a date, and commit to come to church, this sunday, and to our surprise and joy, they came! All three hours! and now they have a baptismal date for March. I'm very content, I can't wait to see there picture in the mission newsletter!

Well I hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Partridge

jump and excel

Hey everybody,

Probably the highlight being interviews with President and Sister Greer. I went out of there feeling good. If for no other reason than just training the past 2 transfers had been a growing experience, at times I just shook my head and thought to myself that I wasn't doing good enough. Which isn't too far from the truth. When it all came down to it, here almost at the end of training, they said that they could see I'd done a good job. We also talked about transfers and the area, and spanish work in general here. In the next 2 transfers we'll receive about a total of 20 new spanish elders, and only 2 of our spanish elders are finishing the mission. We're definitely seeing the boost sooner than we thought. We're looking at 9 new areas by the end of February. Its marvellous to see what is happening. Also with where I'm at in my mission, Sister Greer emphasized that at 18 months its jump or dump time. Some missionaries, jump and excel for the rest of their missions, and others think they've done enough and dump for the final 6 months, she asked which one I would be. I said "Jump!" Man just to think that I'm almost at that point makes me sad, I just want to keep going. I don't want to stop! But it happens, so you've just got to make sure you do as much work as you can when you're in the service of the lord. I feel for Mom and Dad. I know they've put in there all though.
I'm greatful for the opportunity to serve as a missionary, I know that it is only by following the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and enduring to the end, can man be saved.

I hope you all have a great week.

-Elder Partridge