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!

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

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

Hymns on doorsteps

Hello Everybody!

Its been a really good week here in Vancouver. Elder Judd and I are getting really excited for Christmas. We've started singing Christmas hymns to people on their doorsteps. We're also trying to get members to have friends into their home to watch the Joy to the World DVD with them. Another thing is that the Vancouver Stake does a Festival of Nativities every year, the first weekend in December. We're going to go there with some of our investigators this weekend. So lots of exciting preparations for Christmas!

 

We finally got our Conference ensign, so the conference reading challenge has continued. We're now back on track. I actually think I'll finish well before the end of December. I guess I'll have to start over. I've really enjoyed it. There have been a lot of little things I didn't catch just watching it conference weekend. I loved Packer's talk on the Atonement. I think Ma and Pa will relate to his story about Samoa. They'll at least know what he's talking about, going from Island to island. For me I just recognized the names of the Islands from your letters. I definitely recommend to everyone that they make a plan to read all of the conference talks. That's what the 6 months between are for!

Thanksgiving was tons of fun. We kept limits on the eating appointments we set and only had 1 lunch 1 dinner and 1 dessert. We had lunch with the Abdalah's. They made us a traditional turkey, along with some Hispanic sides, of which included, rice, and arepas. We had dinner with the Morelli family and they made us chicken and mashed potatoes. We had dessert with the Krout's from the English ward. They made a really good brownie. So it was a good day! We were pretty well fed.

I hope everyone else's respective thanksgivings were good wherever they celebrated it. I think we can all agree to meet at the home on Forge Ave. for next year's!

 

Well I hope everyone has a super duper week. I do like hearing from everyone. Remember Do a Good Turn Daily and remember the reason for the season.

-Elder Derek Partridge

Awesome Week

This week has been pretty awesome actually. Our mission tour was this week, Elder Pieper from the seventy came and we had a mission conference with him. It was really cool! A couple take-aways I got were:

1. the equation Doubt + Obedience = A Witness. See John 7:17 and Ether 12:6

2. All behaviors, Good or Bad are the result of a misunderstanding of the doctrine or Principles of the gospel.

For Example: Not paying tithing. If the person really understood that,

Doctrine: God Created heavens and the earth and all things therein

Principle: The lord asks for 10 percent of our increase (what he's allowed us to have) as a show of our faith and trust in him and for the building up of the kingdom of god on earth.

BONUS: He promises to pour out a blessing that we "won't have room to receive" if we do obey this commandment
Then they would change their behavior to obey that commandment.

I really liked that and can see how I can apply that to my missionary work.

3. Finding in missionary work can get discouraging if we don't understand. "We're not looking for everyone, we're looking for the elect." (those who are ready to accept the message.) We should pray earnestly to find them and then "think about where they might live, which members might know them, when would be a good time to find them" and then go look for them. If someone turns you down, says they're not interested, than you can move on to the next door to find someone that is ready.

It was a very inspiring conference and I look forward to using these to find more people and meet the branch, and mission yearly goals for baptism.

so 2 days later while we went to contact a referral, we were driving there and I was thinking about where to find the "Elect" I saw an apartment complex that I'd never been to before, and I didn't think any spanish missionary would have gone here recently, but it stuck out to me. So we kept driving contacted the referral and I thought to go to the other side of town where we had planned to knock doors that day. As we were driving back along that road though, Elder Judd asked, "So do you think we should knock some doors in this area?" I agreed, and we went to the apartment complex I had seen. After knocking a couple doors a guy answered and said there was no soliciting here, and to leave. We hadn't seen a sign, so we kept going. I think 3 doors later we found a family of 6 who let us in and received the message of the Restoration. It was Awesome! We have a return appointment for tonight!

Well last bit of info, we found out our branch presidency was getting changed along with some other changes and they were having a meeting to announce all the changes and the new presidency at a meeting last night. So we went and President Ross and his counselors were released, than they released the second counselor in the Stake Presidency, President Harbertson and called him as our new branch President. I could really feel the spirit as he bore his testimony and I'm excited for the work he'll do in this branch!

Everyone have a good week!

Elder Partridge

Specialized Training

Good day to everyone! we've had a good week! We had interviews and specialized training with Pres. Greer. It was a really good experience. They talked about finding, and how baptisms are great opportunities to find new investigators. We should ask the person being baptized to invite a lot of family, friends, and neighbors to come. They also gave us a new dvd about a guy named German who joined the church and how his mother later joined the church because of the spirit she felt there. Its really good and we're going to start sharing it with the members of the branch. Interviews went well. President Greer just encouraged me to keep up the good work in training Elder Judd, and then he repeated to me how we're getting 60 more missionaries in our mission starting next year and how the Spanish compliment will double. He then told me to expect to train 1, 2, or even 3 more times. So looks like I'll be busy.

Things are going good with Elder Judd, we've been getting around finding and teaching. We're hoping to find 5 new investigators this week. We have about 7 return appointments set up from referrals we have received and from people we've found tracting, so hopefully those will all work out. One of those is the Ex of our Recent Convert, Ismael. We got permission with Pres. Greer to go through with it and we have a fhe set up with her, Ismael and the Alquicira family this Friday! We're excited for that.

Other than that we've just been getting ready for the approaching holiday season. Last Monday i found a Christmas tree at goodwill for cheap cheap cheap, so I got that for our apartment. I'm glad we found that, I had to have a tree for Christmas, no matter how small. So I was glad we were able to find a 6 ft one. We plan to ask for ornament donations from the families we visit so we can get it looking festive.

Well that's about it for this week.

Take care, all!

Elder Derek S. Partridge

Happy November

Happy November!

Hey everyone, we have had a good week. On Tuesday Elder Anderson and I went around so he could say bye to everyone. Our branch and the salmon creek ward had a Trunk or treat, so we put on funny hats that we got at value village and passed out some candy. I wore a dog hat and he wore a leprechaun hat. It was pretty funny. The branch relief society was in the building knitting scarves while the kids went and collected candy. I guess it’s a stake RS service project so it was cool to see that our Branch was doing their part. On Wednesday morning I took Anderson to the transfer site and sent him off to Pasco, and then I waited for mi hijo to arrive. After a couple hours of waiting the transfer group showed up with Elder Judd. He is from St. George, Utah. He has 12 brothers and sisters, 3 of which are adopted from Ethiopia. He is 8th in line. He's probably about 6'2" so he's nice and tall like me, and he is a fire ball! He's doing good with Spanish, and he's already contributing a good part to our lessons. That day we went and visited Ismael and then had dinner with the Ortiz family. He loves the food so he is set!

So throughout the week we did a good amount of tracting and teaching people. Including Samira and Joel. Elder Judd invited Joel to be baptized and he agreed so we'll have another one coming up in January! On Saturday we had our Stake missionary breakfast at Bro. Chapman's house. He's the high counselor over missionary work in our stake. It was very good to mingle with the other missionaries and then to discuss the work in our stake. 5 of the companionships in our stake and 6 in our zone are training right now. So we've got a lot of fresh new faces. On Friday we went to the Vancouver Stake Center for a Trainer/Trainee mtg. It was very instructive. One of the things that was interesting that Pres. Greer told us was that our Compliment of missionaries in the WKM is going up from 190 to 250 starting in January. He also told us that the amount of sisters was going to double, which I had expected, than he told us that the number of Spanish missionaries was also going to double, which caught me off guard. I was expecting maybe 5 new companionships but 15? They're going to open a lot of new areas! It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Sunday went well, we had 3 confirmations, 1 baby blessing, and the sacrament. That was a lot of ordinances! We got Samira and Joel out, which was good. Something that surprised me was that Ismaels, Ex-, the mother of his children came to church! So we're going to try to set up a FHE with her and start teaching her! Maybe the gospel can patch up the relationship and they can get married! That would be really cool!

Well that’s about it, I hope everyone has a great week! Thanksgiving is coming!!!!

-Elder Partridge