It’s been a good week, It's been pretty busy with meetings. We had DLC in Ellensburg on Tuesday (District Leaders in our zone with the zone leaders), Leadership training in Kennewick on Wednesday, (all district leaders and Zone Leaders on the east side of the mission) and zone meeting in Selah on Thursday, (all missionaries in our zone) we left these very enlightened. We're starting a challenge, but I'd prefer to call it a unified Book of Mormon study. Rather than reading the whole thing in a certain amount of time, we are studying several chapters on the Atonement of Jesus Christ, leading up to Easter and General Conference. It starts with 2 Nephi 2 and ends with Moroni 7, with authors ranging from Lehi, to Alma, to Jesus Christ. It’s been quite a revelatory experience.

I'll share my first take-away from the Book of Mormon reading. As I was going through it I decided to underline the opposites: bad things, (primarily barriers in our mortal state which separate us from god, trials, consequences of sin), with black; and good things (what helps us to return to live with our Heavenly Father, good consequences, blessings) with Red. It brought me into a realization. The need for opposition in all things isn't only because we couldn't have joy if we didn't have pain, but we couldn't be exalted if we didn't first go through trials. Just as one can't get from the top of a hill to the summit of a mountain without first hiking down the hill through the valley and up the mountain, Adam and Eve couldn't have gotten from Eden to the Celestial Kingdom without eating of the forbidden fruit and passing through the lone and dreary world. Thankfully because of Jesus Christ we not only have somebody to carry our pack or give us a hand during the hard times but somebody who can carry us "on Eagle's Wings" at the times where our strength and our efforts simply are not sufficient to go on our own. That's my take-away on the atonement for this week.

Have a good week everyone!

-Elder Partridge

 

Eagle's Wings

It’s been a good week, It's been pretty busy with meetings. We had DLC in Ellensburg on Tuesday (District Leaders in our zone with the zone leaders), Leadership training in Kennewick on Wednesday, (all district leaders and Zone Leaders on the east side of the mission) and zone meeting in Selah on Thursday, (all missionaries in our zone) we left these very enlightened. We're starting a challenge, but I'd prefer to call it a unified Book of Mormon study. Rather than reading the whole thing in a certain amount of time, we are studying several chapters on the Atonement of Jesus Christ, leading up to Easter and General Conference. It starts with 2 Nephi 2 and ends with Moroni 7, with authors ranging from Lehi, to Alma, to Jesus Christ. It’s been quite a revelatory experience.

I'll share my first take-away from the Book of Mormon reading. As I was going through it I decided to underline the opposites: bad things, (primarily barriers in our mortal state which separate us from god, trials, consequences of sin), with black; and good things (what helps us to return to live with our Heavenly Father, good consequences, blessings) with Red. It brought me into a realization. The need for opposition in all things isn't only because we couldn't have joy if we didn't have pain, but we couldn't be exalted if we didn't first go through trials. Just as one can't get from the top of a hill to the summit of a mountain without first hiking down the hill through the valley and up the mountain, Adam and Eve couldn't have gotten from Eden to the Celestial Kingdom without eating of the forbidden fruit and passing through the lone and dreary world. Thankfully because of Jesus Christ we not only have somebody to carry our pack or give us a hand during the hard times but somebody who can carry us "on Eagle's Wings" at the times where our strength and our efforts simply are not sufficient to go on our own. That's my take-away on the atonement for this week.

Have a good week everyone!

-Elder Partridge

 

Ammon

Well, this has been a sweet week. Elder Hammond and I have been working with a family the zone leaders were teaching before the area split. It’s a single mother with a 17 year old son and a 13 year old daughter. The son was out of the picture and hadn't ever really been in with the missionary lessons before. We kind of pulled him in one night and it’s done wonders. The daughter Joanna has been pretty reluctant to go to a different church and Irma didn't want to come alone so they'd kind of gotten stuck there. Fernando showed up and we started putting an increased focus on him. Getting him to pray, to feel the spirit. We had a good lesson and then came back to help them make carne asada on Saturday and were able to get Irma and Fernando to the third hour of church yesterday. It was really good. Irma loved relief society. It was really good for Fernando in young men’s too. Pienso que a El le va a encantar los 'boy scouts.'

We found just under 40 new investigators last week as a district, so we were all super excited for that. The branch is going to explode!

We had something awesome happen on Thursday afternoon. We went to try a lady named Josefina. She let us in and after we had sat down, before we had even gotten a chance to get started she said something to the effect of, "I have had a lot of questions, and I want to ask you: When Jesus was with his people in Israel and Jerusalem teaching them and all that, what were los mexicanos doing???"

and we were just like "WOW"

I've always had a goal to have an experience like Ammon, and Aaron on my mission where I'm swallowed up with joy and pass out. I was a little surprised it didn't happen there. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and we're going back tonight!

We've just been seeing all kinds of good things so we're excited. Have a good week everybody!

-Elder Derek Partridge

Elder Hammond

Transfer week is down, I'm now with Elder Dowuona-Hammond and we're doing great! He is from Akra, Ghana. His parents are converts but he grew up in the church. He's AWESOME! He went to UVU for a year and a half before coming on his mission, and he is 22 years old. I'm excited to have another opportunity to train. We've been working hard in our new area boundaries. Its been a bit of a shaky start trying to get settled in, but we're focusing hard on finding. One thing we've put a focus on is we've gone through the branch list and highlighted all 42 of the families that live in our area, and we're going to go out and meet each one and look for part member families that we can work with. So last night we were able to find one out in the west valley and we got their phone number to go by and teach them this week.

The district is doing great. Same deal, kind of working into the area split. all have been working very hard and I know within a week or 2 we'll be seeing things pick up a ton. I'm excited to serve with a district of such dedicated and hardworking elders and sisters. All serving in the same branch! Our Branch is so excited to have 8 missionaries. We had Fast and testimony meeting and had a ton of people get up and bear there testimony on missionary work.

Elder Hammond is progressing well, boy does he have a way with people. He has a strong testimony, he is humble and teachable. He is constantly looking for ways to improve. It’s exciting to be able to both work hard and see miracles happen as we follow the spirit.

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Derek Partridge

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