Elder Butler Going Home

Elder Butler is going home. He leaves in a few short hours. Therefore, I am receiving a new companion. His name is Elder Hutchins (sp). This will be his first time being a Zone Leader so I will get to train him on that. It should be fun. He's been out about 16 months. I've never served around him before but I've heard good things. Although it doesn't really matter who I get as a companion at this point I'd be happy with anyone. Elder Hutchins will be great.

Hey! I don't know if you heard. The church announced 58 new missions worldwide. 3 of those are the Washington Federal Way Mission (Seattle area), Oregon Salem Mission, and the Washington Vancouver Mission! That means that our mission is splitting in the near future. Around July. So for the last month of my mission I will either be serving in the Washington Kennewick mission or the Washington Vancouver mission. They have already announced the new mission president that will replace President Greer and the new one that will open up the WVM. We just had a new Assistant to the President called too and he is a really young missionary to be called as AP. I am assuming that is because he will need to help the new Mission president with all the changes. We also had some traveling Zone Leaders called to help with the training of new missionaries. That might be in preparation for the split too. Exciting times! We'll learn more with time.

This last week was a good one. I wanted to make sure that Elder Butler went out with a bang! I didn't want him to get lazy in the last few days. So we set a goal at the beginning of this week to get 100 OYM's (street contacts) and 10 New Investigators. I've never had over 85 OYM's my whole mission So we were going to have to knock a lot of doors (and we did). and the 10 new investigators would be a lot for the current area that we are serving in. Long story short, we did it! We ended with 102 OYM's and 12 New investigators.

The Lord definitely blessed us in both goals. We made the necessary plans to achieve them and the Lord made up the rest. The very first night of the week we went to Rebecca's home. She is a potential investigator who's door we knocked on a few weeks ago. She let us right in and we met her four kids. Ages 13, 15 ,16, and 17. We taught them about the Book of Mormon and set up a return appointment. 5 new investigators on day one! It's not a common occurrence to find a whole family to teach. And then on Saturday evening. We tried back by Kim. She let us in and we met her Husband and one of her boys. We taught about The Book of Mormon and prophets and set a return appointment. 3 more new investigators! And two new families to teach! All in one week. This week was a definite confirmation for me that the Lord will make all good things possible (1 Ne 3:7).

Ummm. I think that's all. The whole family is in my prayers. Especially the St. Johns.

Love,

Elder Paxman

Elder butler in front. Elder Nance bottom right. Elder Babbitt top left. This is who I lived with this last transfer

Mondor Family

Laura Larsen's baptism in Yakima in December

Lillie Harmon's baptism

Monument Oregon - where the kid threw up

Branch in Monument, Oregon

It was another good week. Of course!

We had Zone Conference on Wednesday. We got to meet as Hermiston, Walla Walla, and Pasco Zones. It was fun to see old friends and the conference was in Pasco so I got to go back there for a little bit! It is always great to see President.

I have little time to email today. My computer time was taken up with putting together some reports.

Quick story: We cover a branch of the church in Monument, Oregon. Population: Less than Cathlamet. Much less. And missionaries never go down there. But, we did yesterday. We decided it would be good to make an appearance in a branch that we cover so we hitched a ride with the High Councilman assigned to go there to speak this month. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive one way from Hermiston. They meet in a double wide trailer converted into a church building. There were 13 of us there for church. and that included the high councilman and elder butler and I. We gave talks and in the middle of my talk a 10 year old boy in the back started throwing up hahaha. He threw up four times before he was done. His 5 year old brother said afterward "he had two things for breakfast this morning. Cereal and cereal!" hahahaha. His cereal was all over the ground. They quickly cleaned it up and I promptly closed my talk and we carried on.

After sacrament meeting they had a meal prepared for us. Apparently they do that every third Sunday when they have a high councilor come. That's the best Sunday of the month for them! They cooked us coconut shrimp and a roast among other things. It was very good.

Lovely week.

I love you all.

Elder Paxman

Lots of Baptisms

I was recently asked by someone back home if Hermiston is pretty like Cathlamet. Short answer: no.

It's the ugliest place with a river ever. Maybe it's better in the spring when everything is green. But right now everything is yellow and grey. But what it lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in the character of the people. When anyone moves into Hermiston, the Mayor comes and greets you personally and gives you gift cards and other presents and welcomes you to the town. They were doing that as of about 3 years ago. Maybe it's grown too much since then, but I thought that was pretty cool. Everyone is very nice here. Even though a lot of them dont want to hear our message.

 

Also, another question. Do I get a car. Yes. Lucky for me, I've had a car for the last year. My first area was a walking area and I was there for 6 months, but since then I have been driving.

This weekend 6 people that I taught got baptized. Trina Mears, Brandon Chace and Gage Mondor, Angela Coombs and Lillie Harmon. Those were in 4 different wards. Yakima YSA, Yakima 6th ward, Yakima 2nd ward, and Sandstone ward (here in Hermiston).

 

I think I was most excited to hear about Trina. That was a really good one. I like her a lot. I just hope she stays active.

 

Apparently at the Mondor's baptism Chace (8) and Gage (9) got up after they were baptized and recited a memorized scripture and stated the Doctrine of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, enduring to the end). That was so cool to hear. I really wish I could have been there. It sounded like a great baptism.

Angela was the one who threw out all of her alcohol, tea, etc. a couple weeks ago. She's great :). I am very proud of her.

Lillie's baptism was a success. The Greer's got to come. It is always a treat to see them. Lillie is, again, 96 years old. And as far as President knew that was the oldest baptism this mission has ever seen with him as President. It's never too late! The Doctrine of Christ is for both "old and young" She moves quite slow but she did it. We had planned to sit her down in a chair in the water and then just to tip it back but her feet would have come up so we just decided to let her do it the "normal" way. She was kinda nervous. Her nephew was the one to baptize her and he was holding her there in the water and whispered to her "do you trust me" She kinda just nodded her head and then they went through with the ordinance. She did great. Bent her knees and everything! And she came up out of the water laughing. haha. It was a sweet experience. Her other nephew was also in the water with her to assist with the baptism. His name is Tom. He is a convert of about a year and a half. President Greer interviewed him for baptism and this is the first time since then that they got to see him. They were very surprised to see him there and it was a good reunion. Especially to see him exercising his Priesthood and baptizing his Aunt.

That was pretty much our week. We have nothing to do in the YSA... Everyone is moving out of Hermiston. They young people don't like it here haha. There isn't really anything to keep them here. No College. No mall. No people. No fun. So they move to Portland or Seattle or anywhere else where things are happening. So YSA work is hard. But we have been getting a lot of OYM's (street contacts) recently. So good things are on the horizon. Hopefully the YSA picks up.

24 new investigators this week! So good Hermiston. These missionaries are great :).

Thats all.

Love love,

Elder Paxman

We Will Live Again

Wow. I had a lot of emails to read today. I seemed to read slower than usual too.

I've left my self pretty much no time to write an email. So I apologize for the shortness of this email.

Yesterday I had the privilege of bearing my testimony 2 times. It seems like recently there has been a lot of death and other tragedies going around. So I talked about that in my testimony.

 

My last companion, Elder Manning, has been going through a rough time. His dad has cancer. He was notified of that about a month ago. It was a shock to him and he has been trying to deal with that. It was worse than the family thought and he had to start Chemo. Elder Manning told me that last week through email. I called President because I was worried about Elder Manning. Then we had ZLC on Friday and President kinda addressed that topic in the meeting. He tried to teach us that there are warm and cuddly doctrines and there are wintery doctrines. Trials aren't fun but they are there for a purpose. And then of course with all the news about Cherie I shared a little of my feelings there. Also, recently some of my dad's friends have seen similar trials in their lives.

But with all this sad and suffering I am still very peaceful. It seems like over the past few weeks my testimony has been strengthened in the Plan of Salvation and in Eternal Families. Even last night, we got to teach someone who didn't want to believe in an afterlife. I don't think we were able to help her very much... But in having the opportunity to teach about the Plan of Salvation, I was given added strength to my testimony.

This life is not it. We will live again. Perfection does not come in this life, but it can in the next. All that is unfair about life is made fair through the atonement. But a lot of that doesn't come until after we die. Death is a necessary step in being transformed from mortality to immortality. It is a blessing to know that going through death isn't the end. That's what I bore my testimony on.

On a different note. The Zone did really well this week! We have a zone goal of getting 12 new investigators a week. Which I though was a high but achievable goal. The record in Hermiston zone for the recent past is 16 new investigators in one week. This week we got 35! And one day we got 13!!! It was the day where Elder Butler and I were in Tri-cities for ZLC so we weren't even there to help. It was amazing to see. We crushed the old record. I was very very proud of our zone for doing that. We also got more OYM's in the zone than ever before. We saw some amazing things. It should turn into baptisms pretty soon. We can only hope.

Elder Butler and I are getting along great and I love being able to live with Elder Babbitt and Elder Nance too. It's fun to have four of us in one place because we get to come home and hear about the miracles that they saw that day too.

Well. Short. But I have to go.

I love you all.

 

Hopefully I will get to report a successful baptism next Monday for Lilly Harmon.

Love,

Elder Paxman