Boardman

Well this week was pretty great! General Conference was awesome! I loved every talk. I saw a lot of common themes. Priesthood session talked alot about not just being active priesthood holders, as in going to church every week. But being active priesthood holders as in being worthy and anxiously engaged and searching for opportunities to use your priesthood to serve others. It was a really good conference. I also enjoyed L. Tom Perry's talk. The story he started off with was great. Elder Uchtdorfs talk in priesthood and sunday morning were both good.

Other than that the big news for this week is Transfer calls! Now I had become pretty confident that Elder Swenson and I would stay another transfer in Grandview. We'd been working hard, we've had success, and found a lot of people to teach. But that just goes to show you can't predict these kinds of things. I've been called by the spirit of the lord to another place. This Wednesday I'll be leaving for Boardman! Boardman is about an hour and a half south of the Tricities, and it crosses over into oregon. So its like 30 minutes outside of Hermiston, OR. Its pretty exciting. I'm going to miss Grandview a bunch though. I love the area and the people in it. Its definitely like leaving home again. I figure by the end of my mission, I'll have several "homes" that I will have left behind. So today and tomorrow will be saying goodbye and then wednesday starting out in boardman. I hear I cover an English Ward with a Spanish group, and then 2 other English branches. So thats a lot of english, haha.One of those english branches is down in Fossil, OR. about an hour and a half away, and that branch has 6 members. Boardman is also teeney tiney. I'll let you know more about that next week!

Everyone have a good week!

-Elder Partridge

opening your mouth

Hey, hows it going?

I guess I'll address the 2 paragraphs of my letter last week to let y'all know what happened with those people. Firstly with the referral in Benton City, we got to go over there tuesday night, and it did cost us on miles seeing as its just right outside of tricities but we had a good experience. The young lady we are referring to was apparently contemplating suicide, so we went over to assess the situation, which brings up a good lesson in referrals in the mission field. Don't count on the info in the referral to be completely true, but still be cautious. We went over and met Jessica. She is living with her mom 2 brothers and son in a trailer. About 3 months ago she got an infection in her leg, which left her unable to walk. She's been slowly recovering, and can now walk with some difficulty. She's also having trouble sleeping, and while she had experienced some depression in the past she seemed pretty positive when we met her. We got to know her some more, and talked about how Christ know what we feel, and he is always there for us to confide in and that faith in Christ will help her resolve her difficulties. All the while I was getting the prompting to give her a blessing of health. I kept on pushing it off and hoping for Elder Swenson to offer so I wouldn't have to. Finally I resolved to say it but even then had some trouble getting up the courage to ask. Finally I did and she accepted and I gave her a blessing in my not so great spanish and she felt peace. We left them with a prayer and called the assistants and said it would probably be okay to send the spanish sister missionaries there. There's a lesson we can learn here. It calls to mind Elder Hollands priesthood talk last conference.

"So what are some of the devil’s tactics in this contest when eternal life is at stake? Here again the experience in the Sacred Grove is instructive. Joseph recorded that in an effort to oppose all that lay ahead, Lucifer exerted “such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak.”¹

As President Boyd K. Packer taught this morning, Satan cannot directly take a life... But apparently his effort to stop the work will be reasonably well served if he can just bind the tongue of the faithful. Brethren, if that is the case, I am looking tonight for men young and old who care enough about this battle between good and evil to sign on and speak up..."

So that was a cool experience, hopefully she'll get better soon.

We had the funeral of Corina Santos this week, and we were asked to give the special musical number. It was kind of an interesting experience, to stand in front of a crowd of about 200 people, the majority Nonmembers from the Grandview-Sunnyside area, and sing I know that my redeemer lives, and I am a Child of God. But one of our Potential investigators, Adrian was there with his wife. We had found this guy outside his house one day. We sat there for like 15 minutes talking about his pitt bulls, and then how we were missionaries and what we do. He said we could come back, on the weekend, so we saw him at the funeral and tried sunday night, his wife said he was working and then said "but you're the guys from the funeral right? Come next Saturday afternoon and we'll be here." So sounds like are help at the funeral sparked some interest.

As far as the Santos family goes, they're doing good. We crashed their party Thursday night, David and Susanna had the family over, making carne asada so we got to talk to them a bit and see how they were doing.

Other news from this week, Eduardo Moved! We said bye to him on Wednesday. We also had Stake conference, It was really good. We started teaching Uciel Carrazco,

(Jordan, this is our rich Mexican) He lives on a hill outside of Grandview, with an excellent view of the valley from his back balcony. He's doing good, he has a good family and wants the best for them.

We visited Carlos, he's a former investigator, who has been taught everything like a year ago but didn't show up to his baptism, because he started having trials. He got new roommates and the one was talking about how he was catholic and he only prayed at the church, to which Carlos told him Catholics are hypocrites, that they worship graven images, and so on and so forth. In our heads we were thinking "Go Carlos!" But we're not there to say bad about other religions, so we kept silent, and as soon as the argument kind of slowed down, Elder Swenson cut in with a "... Dios es Grande." (God is Great) to which they both agreed, and we got out of that awkward situation.

Anyway it was a super good week, and we're having a great time. Glad everyone else is doing well!

Elder Partridge

New investigators

Its been good here in Grandview this week. We've had a couple of interesting things happen. Tuesday we got a text from the assistants, Its a referral for a lady living in Benton city, about 20 miles away and 10 miles out of our area. Apparently she's is having a really hard time and is looking for a sign from God to not kill herself. Yeah pretty serious. They're not sending the sister missionaries for safety reasons and I guess we're the next closest Spanish missionaries, so we gave her a call and set up an appointment to go visit her this Tuesday.

Secondly, I don't know if it made it into the news but the ex-wife of Eddie Santos, one of our members here in Grandview was killed by her boyfriend Saturday Morning. They had 2 little sons, and she left him and the kids a while back to date someone else and he got violent. The boyfriend is now in Police custody. The family of Eddie, have all been a big part of the Spanish branch here in grandview. His dad used to be Branch president, and all his brothers and sisters live in the area so they were all gathered together in toppenish and the spanish missionaries in toppenish gave them all blessings of comfort. Apparently, Vicky, a former investigator and sister in law of Susanna Santos, was there and received a comfort blessing. Next thing we know, she wants to start meeting with us again. We looked at the teaching record, and she's been taught basically everything, so I guess something good is coming out of this tragedy. The family is all doing better now, from what I hear.

Other than that, we've been teaching lots of people, and hoping to continue having success. Have a good week everyone!

Elder Cardon

We were in tricities for a mission conference/training, because Craig A. Cardon came to town. I talked to a samoan elder there, and he says his parents live really close to the mission office, and they'd send a welcoming party.

Well its been a super good week here in Grandview, unfortunately I don't have my camera with me so I'll have to catch up on pictures next week. The first half was spent goodbyeing the members in the branch with Elder Bao, and then wednesday morning, he headed up to yakima and I got my new companion, Elder Swenson!!! Biggest realization with the departure of Elder Bao, is that I'm a lot better at speaking spanish than I thought I was. I still have room to improve, but I look forward to continue learning and perfecting it. Elder Swenson is from riverton Utah, he was a cross country runner, and he's been out on his mission for 9 months. He's a good guy and we get along pretty well. We buckled down right away, and though we were really only working for half a week, almost all of our numbers at the end of the week were above last transfers average. So we got a good amount of lessons in. Patricia and family are still progressing, they came to sacrament meeting again yesterday, and we taught them the Plan of Salvation, and they were really interested, and had a lot of questions. They're a really good family, and we're really excited for them. Elvira, brought one of her friends to our lesson with her. We reviewed the restoration, left the friend a BoM and got a return appointment with both of them!

Other than that, the conference with Craig A. Cardon was really good, he spoke of developing spiritual stature, on your mission, to last you the rest of your life. Well we've been enjoying being caught up in the work. You barely have time to think of anything else, and thats the beauty of missionary work. Have a great week everybody,

Con amor, Elder Partridge

transfers

This week has been super good, We had zone p day last week and went up to Yakima and ate lunch and played ultimate Frisbee and whiffle ball and stuff. It was fun, and we took a group picture.

We had district meeting and also another burger party to celebrate last week of the transfer, which brings us to the moment everyone's been waiting for......... Transfer Calls!

Elder Bao, is getting transferred to Longview on the other side of the mission. Elder Swenson, will be my new companion! I guess I'll include some of Elder Bao's goodbye pictures with the people in the branch here.

Elder Johnson, the missionary who has been training Elder Hundley in my district, is being transferred to Basin City!!!!!! Elder Gray will be his new companion.

Other than that zone leaders are staying one of the sisters is getting transferred and everybody else is staying.

I'll miss Elder Bao, but I'm excited to be out of training! Change is always good.

As far as gators go, we got Patricia + family at church yesterday, and they really enjoyed it. and also one of our new investigators, Elvira brought one of her sons. Everybody is progressing pretty well. We actually got a pretty good amount of New investigators this week. Elder Swenson will be transferred in to a promising area, so we can buckle down and get to work and have a lot of success.

Well thats about it! other than that, it snowed this morning, and it was melted by 10.

Have a good week!!!!!!!!

Elder Partridge

transfer calls coming

Well its been a good week in Grandview. Were working hard on finding new people to teach. We're going to try to get more referrals from members, because tracting isn't really effective. We had district meeting on Tuesday and had pizza afterwards, and on Saturday we had our branch Valentines fiesta. It was pretty sweet. We were hoping to get some more investigators out than we did, but every one has been so busy lately! Man we look forward to these branch activities because they're very non threatening and they get investigators to come to the church and meet people without them having to worry about being at a real church service. Anyways it was fun, we've got to work more with the members for finding people and inviting friends to church activities. That will help a lot. This week we'll be having Zone P day. So we'll be driving up to Yakima in a little bit. This Saturday is (drum roll...) Transfer Calls! Its hard to believe it but this transfer is almost over, along with my training. I've enjoyed my time with Elder Bao and the training he's given me, and I'm also excited to see what the future has coming. I hope to stay in grandview. that's what will most likely happen since Bao has been here longer. I guess we'll see!

As far as investigators go, the biggest success is with Patricia and family. She has a fellowshipper with the Oropeza family, and we've been teaching her about once a week. She's been reading and feeling the spirit, so hopefully we'll see some good success!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week! PEACE!

Besos y abrazos

Elder Partridge