Human Back Hoe

Well this weeks sheetrocking project turned into a septic project. We were digging big ditches in Rich's yard to solve a plugged up problem. We left the cleaning out of the pipes to him though. It was pretty fun, I got to show Elder Berg and Bro. Richard why they call me the Human Back Hoe. We got a lot done for him so It was good!

We met a guy named Eliseo a week or 2 ago and he's a pretty nice firm Devout C+E Catholic. He's got a nice family of 12 kids. He's lived in the area for 20 or 30 years and I like the guy so we've been trying to get him out to a church tour or an activity so He can feel the spirit and his awesome family can come be that strength we need in the Spanish Branch. He agreed to come on a church tour Tuesday afternoon if we'd come to the Catholic social dinner that Saturday. We said "why not" and it was a deal. Tuesday rolled around, we had a member who he was acquainted with ready to come with us, and he didn't show. He got out of work late, so we decided we'd show him and not got to the dinner at the catholic church. We finally got the chance to go catch up with him on Sunday night when he was drinking modelo and watching novellas and it turned out he didn't go to the Catholic dinner either. So we're going to try to reschedule for this week.

On Tuesday I got to go on exchange with my Nieto, Elder Sanchez! I brought him here to Chelan and we set out to find people to teach. After a nice lesson with a Lady named Fausta who wasn't interested, a headache of confusion trying to find someone who could help a guy with his car which had broken down almost in the middle of nowhere and a cancelled church tour we went to dinner with Bro. Riggin at La Brisa, a local mexican restaurant, and than frozen yogurt after. I had a bit of a hard time trying to explain what froyo was to Elder Sanchez who had never heard of it or eaten it before, but he Enjoyed it, so it was good. Still no comparison to Frozen Custard.

We had a sweet lesson with Fernando. Jeff England's family had him in their home to be taught. He brought his kids, who were friends with Jeffrey's kids. It was interesting because before they arrived Jeff's son was saying how he didn't want to sit in for the lesson and neither would his friend because it would be boring. It turned out that his friend, between running around and playing outside did come and sit with us several times to participate and was interested in what was taught.

I don't think badly of or hold it against Jeff's son knowing it was quite natural and I would have felt the same at his age. But I thought what a valuable lesson it was, for LDS children at a tender age to see that the Gospel is interesting and important.

Bishop unveiled more of his Ward Missionary game plan yesterday at church. The Priest Ward Missionaries are going to receive an assignment of a person to visit every week, and They'll go with us to complete that assignment.

Bishop's got a great vision and he's been showing videos from the Hastening website in ward council every week. Its awesome to see how things are moving.

We had another miracle at church yesterday, chances seemed poor for a spanish sacrament meeting, seeing as the 2 weeks before nobody had come. As we were discussing this in Ward Council a sister came and asked for someone who speaks spanish. Elder Berg and I went out and there was a Hispanic man in his 40's and his 14 year old son. They were from Sonora Mexico, members of the church. The Boy came up by suggestion of his Grandma to attend school and learn English. The father would be staying for 2 months, and than going to mexico for 2 months alternating throughout the year. They had gotten in contact with the bishopric to find out if there was a church here and they were here to attend. So we had our spanish sacrament meeting with them and a few other white members who had come out to support. I got to give my talk which I had been sitting on for 2 weeks and it was good! Jeffrey, our Ward Mission Leader and kind of the Spanish Group Leader enlisted him immediately to go visit inactive members this week and invite them to church. It was awesome! I'm excited to see what this brings!

This was a more newsy lengthy letter so I hope you enjoyed it!

Love Elder Partridge

Priests

We're going to go help a man named Rich put in sheetrock this week.  He's a former investigator our bishop asked us to go see. He is a really nice guy, he's in his 50's and has long hair but I can see him being a High Priest Group leader. 

 
We got to change out our car this week with transfers. They sent our '09 Malibu down to Richland and we got a '13 Cruze. So that makes me happy. It's so much smoother to drive. It's like trading in your aircraft carrier for a fighter jet. 

Our guy Fernando got back from Mexico this week. He was visiting his mother who had fallen ill. He's a really solid guy; he has a wife and 3 kids. We were comforting him and shared a bit about how God loves us and blesses our families. 

 We were able to meet with Faustino again, he lives with some rowdy guys in a picker cabin in the orchards. He is kind of surrounded by a bad influence but he likes what we teach him and you can tell he has good desires. We were asking him what he wanted from life and what were his goals, he said his main thing was to get married and have a happy family. We told him that was a good goal, and that we had something that could help him have a happy family, and shared some of the plan of Salvation with him. He was intrigued, we'll be back to talk more with him soon.

Our bishop called all the Priests as Ward Missionaries this week. So it’s time to get them working! There's a good group of 5 or 6 here, and it will be fun working with them. We can get them broken in for their missions.

But that’s about it for this week, Take care everyone!

-Elder Derek Partridge

 

Food Bank

It’s been a sweet week. We volunteer at the local food bank every Tuesday, so we did that this week. It’s been pretty fun. We basically just help people take the food to their cars. I got to talking to the Catholic Priest that was also volunteering. He gives the Spanish sermons too, so we basically talked about learning Spanish. It’s a fun deal.

This week we've been continuing our efforts to pump up the Spanish group. Unfortunately we didn't get a turn out to our volley ball activity, or sacrament meeting. We will keep trying.

We had an exchange this Thursday, after a zone meeting. I went with one of our ZL's Elder Decker and we stayed in Chelan. We got a lot of work done it was awesome. We had just had training on talking to everyone, and so that's what we did. We were able to see a lot of good potentials and a new investigator come from it. One guy we talked to gave us some peaches from his tree and we ate them while we talked to him. The peaches are SOOO good. It’s awesome to be able to get them from anyone's tree.

The Fournier's are doing well, just keep praying for them. We got to go by and teach them this week. We're hoping all will continue to go well. 

Yesterday we went to talk to Martin, we were sitting with him out on a bench in the middle of some apple orchards. We were teaching him the first lesson and he brought up some concerns about apostles and stuff, and also about the gift of tongues. His friend Eleazar came out and sat by us. We talked through the gift of tongues thing with him. Right there in Acts 2 it says everyone understood the apostles in their native language. They weren't babbling. They accepted it and then we had to get going so we said a prayer with them. His friend Eleazar said he really liked our discussion and he was going to ponder about it. So hopefully we'll see some more good stuff from them.

We got transfer calls! Good news I am staying and so is Elder Berg, so I'll be here til the end! Elder Judd got called as a ZL. My boy's doing good! And his trainee, my grandson Elder Sanchez is getting transferred into my district. So it’s going to be a fun last transfer. Still haven't heard what’s happening with Elder Dowuona Hammond, I hear he's doing really good though!

Have a great week!

-Elder Partridge

New Beginnings

Hey Family!

How is it going?

It’s been a great week her in Chelan. Yesterday we started having a separate Sacrament Meeting for the Spanish Group, so we were preparing for that this week. We got a list and went around inviting people, members, part member families, investigators and less active members. We got some families and members from the ward to come support. The result: 1 Spanish family came. But they had been less active for a long time! The meeting was awesome. I played the piano, we had a brother from the Ward and Elder Berg administer and pass the sacrament, and most of the adults there got up and bore there testimonies in Spanish, even 1 sister, our WML's wife who hadn't served a Spanish speaking mission bore it in Spanish with the help of her husband. She did really good! 

I bore mine and compared that day to the day of Pentecost. The new beginnings of our Spanish group in Chelan had similar spiritual outpourings with Sister England being able to bear her testimony in Spanish, undoubtedly with help of the gift of tongues.

We had a cool week. we had district meeting with the Brewster elders on Wednesday. We decided to go out to eat at the famous Blueberry Hills restaurant. It was good, famous for their blueberries. I just got waffles and had their blueberry syrup on top. It was delicious. We got to eat with and teach the Fournier Family on Tuesday. Sister Fournier is going to get baptized in the lake this month, so we're excited for that. They are primarily vegetarian so we had some yummy veggie burgers and salad from there garden. It might sound crazy but the stuff is pretty good. Bro. Fournier made some killer vegan asparagus enchiladas the other day, and they were awesome.

 

Things are sweet here in Chelandy land. Take care folks!

-Elder Partridge

 

Fournier's

Hey family, where did July go?

Week 2 in Chelan has been splendid! I got lucky with the shuffle, and scored a second zone temple trip, so we went there on Tuesday o' course. Things are going good here, Bishop unveiled a plan to revamp the spanish membership. The goal is to make it a branch, we're going to start doing activities every week for los hispanos and giving them there own sacrament meeting in the relief society room again. So we're excited to see that happen. It's that kind of concerted effort that makes things happen.

We had the pleasure of meeting the Fournier's. Anyone meet any fournier's down in AZ? They moved from Mesa a while back. Bro. Fournier got baptized here a couple of months ago, and his wife and kids are joining him soon. They are a wonderful family. Their son is a prodigy pianist, actor and baseball player. One of those people that make you want to develop your talents more.

They're awesome though, Bro. Fournier works as a school teacher during the year, but during the summer, he's been working at blueberry hills, apparently a blue berry farm with a restaurant. Sounds like they have some good food. They gave us a tub of blueberries, some of them the size of grapes. They were delicious, and "full of anti-oxidants" :)

 

We also had a zone conference, in which they had me bare my final testimony, I shared a realization I had, the lord needs his missionaries a ton, but he needs his Returned missionaries just as much. I look at the great work Brian and Jordan have and are doing in there callings and see that.

 

We had our Pioneer breakfast at the church on saturday morning and had a good turnout.

All is well, all is well

Have a great week everyone

Elder Partridge

Augustine/ April Blog

Dear Family,
Glad to hear Ma and Pa are back in the coop. Sounds like a good scoop. We've had a good week here. I think the coolest thing that happened, was that my trainer, Elder Bao, or I should say Christian Bao, came back to visit the mission. He came to the baptism on Saturday. That was cool, he is doing well at BYU. He finished his first semester and is starting his second. I can tell his accent is fading. He hasn't been speaking Spanish very much, I imagine. He is doing good though. The other elders had a baptism, for a guy named Santos. His cousin, Leonardo was baptized a couple of years ago in Pasco. He moved to Utah and spent some time volunteering at the MTC. He recently moved back and brought Santos to church. They had been teaching him for a while and now he was ready so it was a cool experience. This week, we have been working really hard. We ended up tracting a ton. We saw fruit Sunday afternoon when Augustine, a 16 year old, we had been teaching, decided to be baptized. We're going to work with him to get him ready for may 18th, and hopefully get his grandmother more involved too. His father died several years ago and so he has been raised by his grandma. Its been really good!

A lot of our other friends are doing well too.

I've loved listening to conference again through the week. I see some common themes with maintaining the home as a refuge from the world, and member missionary work, ministering, and rescuing. It was truly a good conference.

Well I hope all have a great week!

-Elder Partridge

mission transition

So here's what’s up on the Chelan Front, Its way beautiful out here. Just picture a Blue lake in a valley with beautiful homes, and green orchards up the hills on either side. It’s ridiculous how scenic this place is. We cover a ward with a little Spanish group. It’s a nice area. I'm with Elder Berg; he is from Ogden, UT. He's a cool guy!

So we've been working with a Spanish family, they're son,Manny got baptized a couple weeks ago. He is 16 years old, so now we're working on getting the rest, his mother is pretty receptive. It should be good. He is reading the Book of Mormon a lot and getting in to it.

Our ward is very missionary minded. The main topic of ward council, Sacrament meeting, Gospel Doctrine, and Priesthood was Member Missionary work. I thought it was interesting how that worked out. I hope everyone is getting the message! 

The Spokane mission to Kennewick mission transition has been kind of bumpy, that’s why they sent us up here to see if we could smooth things out. At first among the elders in my district I felt like I was in enemy territory but things have gotten a lot better. It’s been hard to politely say, yes I know that’s how your old Mission President, AP, Zone Leader, District leader, did things, but we do things differently in this mission. It’s going take patience.

It’s a beautiful area though, one I didn't ever imagine going too, but I'm glad to be here, and glad to get some good work done here.

Apparently this is a hot spot for summer homes. So far I've heard that someone from the band stone temple pilots, and guns n roses have one up here. Apparently the stone temple pilots one drives a hummer around. I've seen a black hummer twice. I wonder if it was him...

We went to have dinner with and teach the future son in law of a family that is staying in a summer cabin up in the mountains to the east, they said the guy from stone temple pilots lives in their "neighborhood" Driving up there was like driving up the trail at camp Geronimo, it was just dirt with pine trees on either side.

It’s a very fun, interesting area. And I'm excited to see more of what it has in store.

Have a good week everyone,

Elder Partridge