June 27, 2016

Okay lots to report on this week. My new companion is Elder Willie. He has been out a year. He is an interesting guy so this will be an interesting transfer. He asked me if I like dungeons and dragons haha. I said, "I don't know what that is." He likes cross country mountain biking, so that is the closest thing we have in common. He is from Utah. He wants to be a mortician or go into film. He always randomly starts laughing under his breath which drives me nuts, but there are worse things I guess. I think I almost killed him on Tuesday. We were knocking doors all day pretty much and it was kinda hot out. He was starting to lag a little bit and we weren't having any luck. So I got him a slurpee to keep him alive.

        I am in the Maplewood area which covers some of Southwest Portland, Beaverton, and a little bit of Lake Oswego. It is a pretty big area and has a ton of houses. I'm pretty excited about that because there are plenty of people to talk to. There are a lot of Muslims, Jews, and Atheists in this area. The ward has a bunch of old people in it haha. There are old people and a few young families of people who are in school or just got out of school. We also have sister missionaries covering the same area we are covering which is interesting. I think last transfer the elders just chilled the whole time because the stats sucked. And the sister have a lot more investigators than we do. And it's the same exact area so I don't know what the excuse would be. This week was pretty good though.

        We started teaching this Pilipino couple. Their son is on a mission in the Philippines and they are interested to see what he is teaching. They are so awesome. He said that his son gets after him because he doesn't email him very often and he said he doesn't like to do it because he gets emotional every time and he doesn't like to cry. She fed us a huge lunch of steak, chicken, fruit, asparagus, salad, and pie. And her husband said you see how happy she is by her body language. It’s like she is feeding her son. It was pretty sweet. They had lots of questions and we brought our ward mission leaders wife who is from the Philippines and they were speaking tagalog. It was hilarious.

        We taught this guy whose wife his a member and is returning to activity. He was an interesting guy. He is an er doctor. He is a vegan and has his kale garden in his backyard haha. He tried to disprove the Book of Mormon with his ancient coin collection. He said he doesn't believe it because it talks about metal work and coins, but they never find any of that in the American continents. We told him to focus of the doctrines the Book of Mormon teaches. It was interesting, but he gave us each two widows mites which is cool. And he has a coin which "could have been one of the 30 pieces of silver that judas got”. He said he likes the Mormon church, but he isn't sure about the Book of Mormon. We told him to just keep coming and sometime down the road things will fall into place.

        There is this apartment complex in our area were were knocking doors in and these kids kept harassing us. They wanted a book Mormon so we gave one to them. Then they wanted my iPad. I wouldn’t give it to them and they tried to take it from me. I still had that Starbucks gift card you sent me, but it only had a couple dollars on it. So I gave it to one of the kids. Then we went back the next day and they wanted another book of Mormon so we gave it to them. And last time they wanted my watch so this time I didn't wear my watch. And then the kid asked me for my watch but I didn’t have it so he was sad haha. I'll attach the video I took of them.

        We had a ward council meeting this Sunday and it was ridiculous. It was the worst ward council I have ever witnessed. They talked about home teaching and visiting teaching and how you would feel if someone came into your home and asked how your prayers and scripture study were going. Then a couple of the people said they would be offended which I thought was a joke in and of itself. I had so many things to say, but I just kept quiet and did the missionary report when it was my turn to speak. I was thinking about bringing up Matthew 24:10, but there was already enough tension so I just kept to myself.

        That's all the excitement for this week. Just knocking a lot of doors. Love you guys

Elder Garfield

June 20, 2016

This week was pretty interesting. We had the head of the missionary department, Elder Nielsen, come and teach us. I was pretty disappointed when he didn't teach any new doctrine ~ just the fundamentals of missionary work. It makes sense because there's no change to doctrine in the church, God is always the same. I am also getting transferred. I am going to southwest Portland. I am not sure who my new companion is going to be, but I will probably figure it out soon. I’ll be serving in the maplewood ward. It should be a good time. We also found a sweet new investigator this week, his name is Austin and he is a senior in high school. His family isn't super religious and he is trying to find his path in life. He had read 10 chapters in the Book of Mormon before our first lesson with him. We got a referral from a member of our bishopric. He said some guy he talked to lives in a motor home and he moves it around Canby. He said that he usually parks it in Safeway. We went to Safeway and saw this motorhome so we knocked on the door and it was super awkward. The guy was not interested at all. We took a picture of the motorhome to make sure was the right one. We showed him and he said it was not the right one. So that was really interesting. Also we went to have dinner at this older lady's house. And she has this big old loom inside her house. So we asked her about it and she was making some fabric that she was making dishtowels out of. So she taught us how to weave. Which is kind of cool, but very very useless. I was talking about how I was going to get a loom. She said if you want to get a loom that you need to consult an expert because there's lots of different types of looms. So I think I'm gonna look into it. It seems like it be really fun hobby, except it's really boring and time-consuming. Our neighbor asked me if I had seen the police out in front of the duplex. I said I hadn't and they told me why they were out there. Apparently yesterday while we were at church their son's mom was there to pick him up. Since it was Father's Day he was supposed to stay with his dad at the duplex. So she was very very angry and also she was high. She made a big scene and the police were called to get her to leave. Then they told me that later in the day she kept calling them saying that she was going to report them for kidnapping her son. She seems a little bit of her rocker. The neighbors told me that is why you find the right girl the first time. I was like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah sounds like a good idea. It's going to be interesting living in a normal apartment and not the duplex with the stray cats. Most of the cats are gone now. This week they captured them and took them to an adoption place. So now the only cats that are left are scratch Eye, elder menlove, sister menlove, and the bobcats. The Bobcats  don’t stay around much, because they are afraid of us. The other cats are afraid to, but not as much. Also I think the black cat is still around somewhere. But it's pretty rare when you see that one. And I think there are one or two gray ones left. So we still have a good amount, but not as much. The Bobcats aren't really bobcats, but they have no tails so I call them the Bobcats. Not much else to report on this week. I will let you know who my new companion is and where my new address is when I can.

Love,

Elder Garfield

June 13, 2016

This week was just so good. I am not really sure what happened. I think it was a good week. We found out that one of the less actives That came back to church has a daughter who is not baptized. So that is pretty sweet we're going to try and baptize her. We have been stepping up our game to try and scare the cats away. I started sneaking up on them while they are sleeping and dumping a Picture of water on them. It is super funny and it doesn't really hurt them but they hate it a lot. And so they are very very very very afraid of us now. Anytime they see us they quake and tremble because of fear. They won't even stay in the area when they hear our door open. So that is good. I think the neighbors are trying to get someone to come out and trap all the cats. Which will be cool, but I will miss them. On Sunday a Laurel in our ward came up to us at church and said her friend wants to take the lessons. So that is pretty awesome. We talked to him on Sunday and he seems pretty interested in learning more. And he has been reading the book of Mormon. Which is significantly better than everyone else we've been teaching. Other than that we don't really have anyone to teach. Our investigator who had a date to be baptized dropped us. So that was disappointing. We went on exchanges. I went with Elder Richard's to molalla. Molalla is a pretty interesting place. It is very hick. Even more so than Canby. It was a good time and we had a lot of fun. Brother Steve Who is the member in Oregon city who loves to play Yahtzee has been calling us every day pretty much this whole week. He wanted us to come over to play Yahtzee with him today. So he told us to buy some donuts and orange juice and come over at 9 o'clock in the morning. So we did and it was good to see him and his mom. But he had to go to the doctors to get an MRI for his back. He has to go all the way to Greshem because that's the biggest MRI machine in Oregon. And he is a big man. We also did tye-dye last Monday. So this Monday we will be able to pick up the shirts and I am super pumped about it. Transfers are next Monday. So if anyone is planning on sending a package then get it here by Sunday or sooner otherwise I won't get it for a long time. The weather has been very nice this week. Last week it was kind of hot, but it wasn't raining so I wasn't complaining. But this week it is been about 69° the whole week... Which is great weather. On Saturday we had a waffle breakfast with the stake presidency. This has been my ninth waffle breakfast with the stake presidency. I've been here in Oregon city so long that I've seen two different stake presidents and four stake conferences. On the 23rd it will be my nine month mark. Not that I've been counting. Today is day number 265 not that I've been counting. So basically I'll see you all pretty soon and just like a year and a half. Also Ward Council this week was pretty funny. We talked about emergency preparedness. They made this list of emergencies that could possibly happen. No, sharknados were not on the list. Then we talked about what would happen if those things happen. For example water shutting down or running out of food. And then we talked about dividing the ward into zones. Then we talked about how you can't have a zone without a communicator in it. How would they communicate? That wouldn't make sense. And then we just talked about random stuff having to do with emergencies for a little bit. It was kind of a waste of time. Then for the other part of ward council we talked about insurance policies. Because a member of the ward got in an accident and we weren't sure if they were insured or not so two members of the ward council we're arguing about what insurance policies will cover and what they won't cover for A good 20 minutes. I was so glad I attended. Another funny thing that happened was while we are sitting in the Priest quorum for third hour a ward member came in and grabbed one of the priests because someone's cows got out and he had to go put them back. It was the bishop’s cows and he was out of town and you cant just have cows roaming around because that's dangerous because cows are dangerous and also they could get run over or someone could hurt them or maybe someone would try and steal them or something along those lines. Other than that not much to report on. Just another week in the paradise of Canby, Oregon.

Love you all,

Elder Garfield

June 6, 2016

This week was pretty average. It was kind of hot. It was about 95 with 50 percent humidity.  Everyone was freaking out like they were going to die. Every time we knocked on the door they would make a comment about how hot it was. We got offered a lot of water. So it's kind of nice. They still weren't interested. I checked the weather at home and the high was 108 so I didn't feel so bad. We weren't able to find any new people this week. So that was a bummer. We went tracting in town which was interesting because the people in town are very rude most of the time.   I don't know why they live in town if they hate people coming to their door.  We knocked on this one door and talked to this lady who is atheist. She was pretty nice but wasn't interested. So we were walking away from her house and some guy came from behind the house to yell at us. He pointed to his no soliciting sign and said hey buddy no soliciting. I told him we weren't soliciting but that we are just sharing a message about Jesus. He pointed to his stupid sign again and said this means I don't want people coming to my door. He said if you look along the houses on the street there's lots of the signs. it means they don't want you to go to their door. He was yelling and I was yelling back that they (his neighbors) didn't seem to mind so much. He said just keep that in mind and I said will do! And then we knocked on his neighbors doors. I don't know why people hate people coming to their door so much. It takes 30 seconds to answer the door and say not interested. I don't even know why they have a door if they hate people coming to it so much. They should just build a brick wall in front of it. And no soliciting does not mean that you don't want people coming to your door. It means you don't want solicitors coming to your door. He made me super angry so I just had to take a minute and say WWJD what would Jesus do haha. I got your letter with the gift cards. We already went to Starbucks and I got a smoothie. I felt like a basic white girl. It was pretty funny. I can't wait to use the McDonald's gift card. But the McDonald's in Canby is still under construction. They tore it down since I've been here and it's almost already rebuilt (that's how long I've been in Canby). It's going to be a super McDonald's which is awesome so I'm not complaining. But I probably won't be in the area when it's complete. Transfers are coming up in two weeks. And I probably won't be staying in Canby. So just keep that in mind for packages. If you'd like to send any. I will probably be gone on the 20th. Other than that nothing too exciting happened this week. We are trying to find different places to tract because all the places nearby have been tracted a lot. So we’ve been doing some Boonie  tracting. But it's hard because it takes a long time to knock on any doors. The driveways are like a mile long and each house is like a mile apart. And people get mad when you drive up their driveway so you have to park outside on the street. But all the streets have a 4 foot gutter next to them. So it's hard to find a place to park. It was funny because during gospel principles class the teacher asked us what good happened during our week. She called on Elder Goodrich first and he had nothing to say ~ because nothing good happened this week. My good thing that happened this week was that someone offered us water. OK. Goodrich sat there for a while and came up with this as his good thing. "We got to talk to a lot of people" Hahahahahahahhaha. Also we raided the Di-pod in the church parking lot. We found a sweet speaker. So now we can listen to all kinds of stuff. Like Motab. Classical. Catholic talk radio. All kinds of stuff. So I guess that was a good thing. Probably not the best thing to share in gospel principles though. We've been living breadcrumb to breadcrumb. Because last month we didn't get paid before payday. So we had no food. And not a lot of members signed up to feed us this week. So we ate almost everything that we had. So I'm excited to go get some cocoa puffs today. But I was thinking maybe I would make things a little healthier so I don't get as fat so maybe I'll eat some special K instead. We will see. That's all I have for this week. Tune in next week for the next update.

Love,

  Elder Garfield

May 30, 2016

Hey here is the weekly update. We met with the Allen's. He is the guy who grows medical marijuana and he and his fiancé have four daughters. We had a great lesson with them about the plan of salvation. His twin girls had their book of Mormons in hand ready to go and they can't even read haha. They are such a great family. He's got his grow operation in a huge barn next to his house and he is a "master gardener". He and his fiancé were both inactive members, but he had his kids and he wanted them to grow up knowing who God is and he doesn't want them to go down the same path he did. He didn't always legally do what he does now. And he has had some serious trials that he caused in his life and had to overcome. His dad who is technically his step dad is super active and goes to the temple every week so I'm sure he is thrilled about this new change. They were at church this Sunday and it was great to see their whole family there. We also got Andrew to come to church. He isn't really sure why he wants to join the church. He has some Mormon friends and they said it was a good one and he wants to be closer to God. I guess that's as good a reason as any.

     I'm definitely starting to really like Canby and it has taken a while. It is really small and kind of redneckish. If you look on YouTube and search welcome to Canby there is a hilarious video a member showed us. It's a song about Canby. But the ward is really great and it seems like we are on the right track to get some work happening here. A lot of people here are really stuck in their routine. We talked to a lady who has lived in the same house her whole life and gone to the same little church down the road the whole time. She is like 80 years old! The chances of us converting her are not so good haha. Being new here is living here only 5 years. It's crazy. So two of the cats that live outside our duplex gave birth. The one gave birth to 4 kittens. The other we are not sure because it just barely hatched em. So now we have 15-18 stray cats that live around our house. Hopefully we can have 100 by the end of the year.

   The mission office sends us mass emails sometimes and it is sent to everyone in the mission. Sometimes they send it to us and forget to hide the emails so you can hit reply all. I was trying to mess with them and so I hit reply all and said okay. Then a few other elders started responding too and everyone in the mission kept getting the responses and finally the assistants to the president replied and told us all to stop haha. We got em so good.

  We went a talked to this family that lives way out in the country. He unfortunately wasn't home and we talked to his wife briefly. Her name is Billie and his name is Colton and they have three kids. Charles, Harrison, and Ricker. They are really nice and hopefully we can start teaching them soon.

   That's all I got for this week. Have a great week. Love you

Elder Garfield

   Tell dad and Johnny they better win

May 23, 2016

This week was super Duper. We baptized Linda. It was a great baptismal service. Not a ton of people showed up but there were a good amount. Also her son who is a nonmember was there. He is super nice. But not interested. She got confirmed on Sunday. We got to stand in the circle and it was pretty awesome. Linda was the first baptism this ward has had in 14 months. Hopefully we can get a couple more. Andrew who we taught last week and we set a baptismal date with canceled on us this week. And he didn't come to church. So hopefully we can get in contact with him again.

      We did a lot of service this week. A lot of people got mad at us this week. Sometimes we do service at the Canby adult center. We serve food in the kitchen for all the old people. The kitchen people are really mean and they get mad at us because we are sure what to do because they never tell us what to do. Usually the adult center will call us and tell us when to come in. This time they never called us, so we didn't know when to come in. Then we were over doing service for a member in the morning and we got a call saying that we were supposed to come in. They were pretty mad at us, so I told them that we would come in late. Then when we got there they were getting all in our

business. It was really annoying because they all work there and we don't have to volunteer there at all, but they get all in our business and get angry at us and it's really frustrating.she said it is been

the third Saturday of the month for 30 years that you come in. I said "we haven't been here 30 years so we didn't know that. They usually call us and tell us when to come In". They are super short tempered and always get mad at us for doing stuff wrong. But they never explain how or what to do. So we told them that we had an appointment at 1:30 and left early. We probably won't ever volunteer there again.

     Also the garden performance was this week. Our ward has been working on it for like ever. They were super excited about it and said it would be the missionary event of the century. This women in our ward name Laura told us that they wanted us to usher so we would have to go to the church at 6 and then we have to stay until after the garden which ended at 8:10 and then stay after to help clean up and talk to people. They also wanted three sets of missionaries to be there the entire time. So then Goodrich told them that that was not the best use of time. We said that we would come at the end to talk to people and help clean up, and that we would bring the three sets of missionaries but we wouldn't stay the whole time. Laura got Super mad at us. They were going to call Our zone leaders and President Ballard to get them to tell us to stay at the garden. Also just to add to the picture Laura is kind of old and really broad shouldered and probably lesbian. And unmarried. And really short hair. She called the zone leaders and they said the same thing that we said. They were one of

the sets of missionaries that was going to come. So Laura got super mad at them too. It all worked out in the end. We were there to talk to people and there were a lot of non-members there but none of them would really talk to us, and We didn't find any new investigators from it. But it was cool because I got to see the bishop for my first area and also some other members from Oregon city second. It was hard to find the nonmembers because they still look like people. And they dress the same.

    We got in contact with Colton a guy who lives way out in the boonies. We told the ward council about it. We said we'd been tracting on Yoder Road. The bishop asked surprised, "you've been tracting on yoder road? You must be getting desperate". He has no idea how desperate we truly are.  But Colton is pretty cool he has a young family and seems pretty interested. He said we could come back up on Saturday and teach his family. Hopefully it all turns out well and he gets baptized. It would be awesome to teach a whole family, but it is really hard to find families to teach.

    This less active woman finally came to church. Her name is sister Newell. And she gave us a $25 subway gift card which is awesome because I have like $12 to last the rest of the month haha. Hope you all have a great week.

Love,

Elder Garfield

May 16, 2016

This week was pretty awesome. I have been getting pretty frustrated with the missionary work here in Canby because all the people we have been finding are just medium interested or just "curious to learn more about different religions" so they won't do the things we ask them. For example reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. So I was pretty frustrated. This week changed all that though. We got in contact with the Allen family. He is the one who grows medical marijuana. They are awesome and they have twin girls who are 7 and then two younger daughters. He just out of the blue decided to go back to church so that his daughters could be raised up in it do he was there this Sunday with 3 of his girls. The mom had to stay behind because one of the girls was sick. It was great when we were teaching him. He started talking about how he wants to get married in the temple. He said "yeah because there is like regular marriage and then there is like extra married for time and all eternity. That's getting married to the max bro" it was awesome we were all cracking up. Then this Sunday we got a text saying that there is a guy named Andrew who is interested in talking with us. It had his number so I called him and he said "yeah I was raised baptist and I have been thinking about converting to Mormon". I was so pumped. We had a lesson with him later on Sunday night and he agreed to be baptized on June 18. Also Linda Conley is getting baptized this Saturday so we are pretty pumped about that. I'm glad we found a couple more people because it is the worst when you baptize everyone and then you have to start over. It's better to keep finding people while the other people are progressing towards baptism. We also found rosa. She is from Mexico I think and she

doesn't speak English so we told her we would have the Spanish missionaries come by. The Spanish missionaries called her and they said she had no idea what was going on haha. I was laughing because she had no idea who we were, but she accepted a Book of Mormon and gave us her phone number. Hopefully the sisters will be able to teach her. Some funny things that happened this week....

There was this potential investigator we were going to visit and we are walking up to the door and this guy is in front of us going to the same door and he gets there and opens it then kneels down and crawls in half way. And then he just stays there with his butt poking out the door a little bit. We still wanted to see the potential and Elder Holland said be persistent so we go up to the door anyway. We say "excuse me", but he didn't hear so we just kinda knock on the side of the house. He jumped up so fast and just started walking backwards into the house. He was so scared hahah. It was great.

So the tree fell in front of the church and there is a guy named Dennis. He is a member. He was at the church because he is putting on this musical production thing and everyone was practicing. He always seems nervous about stuff and he is super stressed about his musical production and he comes up to us and says "hey elders I really, if you can, can you go out and take a picture of the tree because I can send it to brother Perez and he can get it in the newspaper because he knows the newspaper guy and it can be like some great publicity and then we can be like yeah the tree fell In front of the church and you know what is happening at the church is this musical production called the garden... And it can be some great publicity because you know that a tree doesn't just fall for no reason right?" We said sure we will go take pics of it. Another example of how he is losing his mind is that he called us this morning and said "hey elders can I call you back"

and then he hung up haha. And he hasn't called us back.

Love,

Elder Garfield