Week 94 Mission Update

 Week 94 April 29-May 5

May 6, 2024

Hey guys! I just realized it's been a while since I have written an email so I figured I probably should.

Anyway transfers happened a couple weeks ago and me and my companion Elder Broadbent and both staying here in Salem! It's still been kind of an adjustment going from small boonies towns to the biggest city in our mission, but all things considered I think it's going well!

The work here has been moving along. I don't know if you guys remember the talk from Elder Holland when he talks about believing in good things to come, but let me tell you guys he was right! The Lord truly does want to bless each of us. Within the past couple of weeks we have gotten referrals that have become pretty much our whole teaching pool. Which is so crazy because the rest of mission referrals have never really worked. It's actually kind of funny because when they send the referral they put in their number and address so we can contact then. Then we call them or knock on their door and most of the time, they are like uh I never asked for this, or don't text me ever again. Which makes no sense because how do they think we contacted them but hey who knows the seeds were planted. 

Anyway a couple of our referrals are from the same family! We are teaching the mom and the daughter. The moms name is Mary, and the daughter is Zoey! We met with Zoey first last week, and she is way cool, we gave her a couple of spots to read in the Book of Mormon this week and we texted her and asked how it was, she said she read all the places we marked and had questions! We are meeting with her again in Thursday so I am excited for that! We met with Mary last Saturday and she is awesome as well! During her lesson she was like I have a daughter meeting with the missionaries and we were like yo we are the ones teaching her. The funny thing is they still want to meet at different times but hey whatever works! I think the best part about this whole thing is that the reason those 2 are so interested is because of friends they have that are members and the example they were for them! Both of them already know so much about the church, it is so cool to see how members of the church live the Doctrine of Christ and show love to others and it brings about HUGE miracles! We also had a good lesson with Sharon and really got her thinking about baptism! Also we had a lesson with our friend Constantine, who had a friend in our ward who invited him to take the lessons. The lesson we had was so good! We talked about the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ and then the member testified and the spirit was totally there, I know he felt it too!

We had lots of service this week, and interviews with our mission president. One of the service projects was hauling, I would say a couple hundred books into a U haul and then to the library. Maybe my Mom was right when she always said lift with your knees and not your back, cause my back was hurting the next day 😅. We also saw a racoon just hanging out in a park last week that was crazy. A couple other crazy things that have happened was we went to an eagle scout court of honor for a basher, that was interesting. We also had a friend give us lots of cans. In Oregon you can turn in cans for 10 cents and he said he wasn't going to use them so he gave to us for helping him, the thing was he gave us about 800 cans which turned into 80 bucks, let's just say we ate good that night! 😁 

Overall things have going good, I absolutely love being a missionary, sometimes it is so hard but other times it is the most rewarding thing in the world! It's crazy that I have been doing this for 19 months! Anyway I love you all, and hope you all are doing well!!

Elder Barker