03/16/2015

Dear Family,

Things are going great here in the Battleground ward. I am learning a ton here. The ward is huge! I have been here a month and I feel like I hardly know anybody. The ward is so good and willing to help us out. Again, the youth here are awesome. We take them out a lot.

Kate's baptism was on Saturday. We took pictures, but they are all on Kate's phone so I am waiting for her to email them to me. The baptism was so good. Kate's parents were there. They are both kind of anti. Kate and Steven both fasted that they would have a positive experience. Kate said that her mom was still kind of iffy, but her dad had tears in his eyes and really loved it. We will see what happens there. I said the opening prayer and Elder Aguirre and I talked about the Restoration. It was tough leaving Portland. I hope that I will be able to serve there again sometime.

Jeff came with us to the baptism. He is one of our investigators. We had a ride all set to go down to Portland. We talked with Jeff on Friday and he wanted to come. The person giving us a ride knew Jeff and he wouldn't give him a ride. He didn't say why, but I am pretty sure it is because he smells like tobacco and the person giving us a ride has a nice car. I was so mad!  I usually don't get too fired up about things, but that really did not sit well with me.We called people all night on Friday and understandably nobody could just drop everything and give us a ride to Portland the next day. We called about 20 people between Friday night and Saturday morning. Finally at 10:00 (the baptism was at 12:00) we asked Brother Bennet (the guy we live with) if he could. He was so willing and it was an answer to our prayers. I am really glad that it worked out and Jeff had a good time.

I'm not sure about Mike. He didn't go to church again. It is really frustrating, especially because he is the one that we are working the closest with. He is a really nice guy, but he doesn't have a desire at this point. We are meeting with him on Wednesday so we will see how that goes. Reine did come to church, though. We had a good lesson with her on Thursday. So we had dinner with this family. The mom is less active and her three kids are not members and the dad living in North Carolina won't give parental consent. The mom is really super nice and loves the missionaries, she just has a hard time making it to church. So we got out of dinner and the member that we planned on going with cancelled on us so we needed somebody to make sure our numbers were all good. So we asked the mom if she could go and she was more than willing to go. It was an awesome lesson and she bore her testimony about Jesus Christ. It was another example of how God doesn't do random.

I think the baseball team ca win some games. It will definitely be a rebuilding year, but there will be some good things that happen. Were there any surprises? Are you practicing outside? Remind me who Brenda Sewell is? I am sure that I know her, but I need a refresher. That is a great idea for sharing time... the rock and the sand. I can probably figure out something to do similar to that. So I was reading the Ensign for this month and I saw an entry from Jen Hansen from Idaho... I am sure that there are 50 Jen Hansens in Idaho, but never know if it is the one we know. Elder Aguirre got really sick Saturday night. We had to stay in and miss church on Sunday. It was weird. i ended up just calling a bunch of people so I could get out of the house for an hour and so somebody could stay with Elder Aguirre. He seems to be feeling better now. 

I think I am pretty good as far as things I need. i am kind of craving some peeps:) Some contact stuff would be great also. Thank you! Thanks for the email. I hope everybody ahs a great week. I love you!

Jaxon