Grandview

Hey I'm doing alright! Our Area is Grandview, its a small little town
and its 30 miles west from the Tricities and 40 miles east of Yakima,
but we are in the Yakima Zone/stake. Our Branch is in Sunnyside, which
is about 5 miles away, and there are also 2 other Spanish elders in
the Sunnyside area, whom we share dinner appointments with and go to
the same Branch. Its a pretty nice little area. I'll start with the
Members we're staying with: Brother and Sister White. They're super
cool. Sister White teaches Biology at the High School, and Brother
White teaches an afternoon computer class at YVCC Yakima Valley
Community College, and substitutes at the High school some mornings.
Every saturday morning Brother White makes pancakes for us so thats
Awesome. And one morning, we helped them put up their christmas
decorations, so I'm not totally missing out on a real Christmas. They
have 2 well trained dogs, Zeek and Toby. I probably spelled zeek's
name wrong, and he'll punish me for that later. They're a lot of fun
to have around and play with. They're a super cool family. Elder Bao,
my trainer is from Ecuador. He learned english here on his mission and
he's pretty fluent now. He's super cool. Our Branch president,
President Bingham. We ate dinner at their house last night, and they
have a nice house out in the boonies and grow a lot of fruits and
vegetables. We had fresh apple juice, potatoes, salad, broccoli, and
peach pie. Of course that was all from storage because its winter
right now. First impression of fruits and vegetables in washington:
What was I eating before? It all looks so fresh and vibrantly colored,
and the apples are big and delicious! There's a lot of farming, and a
lot of grape growing. They have several wineries here because of the
grapes, hehehe but of course nothings growing right now because it is
COLD! Its about 40 at the highest, but with a little moisture in the
air it feels a lot colder, and then gets down to like low 30s when the
sun sets and then like 20 over night. Well we've taught a variety of
people. Its interesting the older generation all speaks spanish but
everyone thats younger than about 30 speaks primarily english. We
teach people in varying circumstances: lots of small homes and trailer
parks but theres also some that aren't doing too bad. Theres always
Chiuahuas barking at us in the Trailer parks. We teach this one
investigator, he lives in someones basement, and the ceiling is less
than 6 feet. So I was ducking pretty bad when we visited him. Another
investigator family we're teaching, Daniel and Nancy. They're super
cool, they live in one of the trailer parks but they take care of it
so it looks nice. He's a really cool guy, he speaks english pretty
good. Him and his wife went to high school here and he was actually
really smart and was in all the AP classes, but had to wait til he was
23 to start college because he didn't have his green card yet. Now
he's got his green card and is working on a computer Science degree.
So we've been having him read the Book of Mormon, and he is getting
really in to it. I read him Mormon 8:35 where mormon is saying that he
saw our day and is writing these things to us. And I told him how we
can apply the things in the book of Mormon to our lives and he caught
on to that really quick. We're going to follow up and see if he prayed
about it, this wednesday and then we're going to go for The baptismal
commitment, I'm having trouble understanding the spanish, because they
talk so fast, I usually get the main Idea of what people are saying.
It gets frustrating, I want to be fluent now! But its something you
have to work through and it builds character, hahaa. First time going
to church in the field was interesting. We have Sunday School,
Priesthood and then sacrament meeting last. Sunday school was a bit of
a challenge. Symbolism in the Book of Revelation, is a tough topic as
it is but it is even more so in Spanish! hahaha. Sacrament meeting was
interesting, By the closing prayer our numbers had halfed. Hehehe.
We'll have to work on that. Well Pday is great, We get 2 free meals
from subway a week, so we got ours for lunch today. So that was
delicious. Other than that, we're just working up a storm! We're
trying to get 20 baptisms between us and the sunnyside elders by the
end of the year. We'll be having, in the words of the other elders, a
"Mexican Swim Party" or a "Wet Christmas" Inactivity is also a pretty
big thing that we're working on. There's plenty of work to do! Love
you all! Bubye!
-Elder Partridge