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

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