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

May 9, 2016

Hey everyone. Not much to report this week since we talked yesterday. This week we just had the regular routine. I'm staying in Canby for another 6 weeks. It should be good. I like the members here. Should be good, my companion is still elder goodrich. Not much time to write today so sorry for the short email. This pday we hung out at a members house and played basketball and what not. It's been pretty fun. I learned how to kickflip so that is good. Happy late Mother's Day. I love you.

May 2, 2016

This week was pretty grand. We had a few good experiences. It might be my last week in Canby so we will see next Monday if I go somewhere else. A couple cool stories from this week. I'll tell the coolest one first since it just happened a couple hours ago. We had to drop our car off to get detailed in hillsboro which is the other side of the mission. We were out there with the zone leaders because it was gonna take all day and we are picking it up tomorrow. So we were looking for a place to eat and lo and behold there is a McDonald's which is great because the McDonald's in Canby is shut down right now. So I say lets go to McDonalds and everyone was like oh no blah blah blah. I convinced them and we had a beautiful meal. Then We go and walk across the parking lot to a thrift store. As we walk over this lady comes up to us and says hello. She was a member. She started crying and said she left the house that morning to kill herself, but she knows God sent us there to stop her. She said she needs to go to the temple visitors center. So we said go and she left. Then We walk into the thrift store and I say, "and thus we see that McDonald's saves lives". I finally have proof of the divinity of McDonald's.

     Another cool story. We knew a member of the ward was having a wedding reception for his daughter at the church so we texted him and offered to help him. He said yes so we did. Then we went to part of the reception and right away we met this guy from China and taught him the first lesson. It was great. He is a Buddhist.

     We were driving down the street and I saw this guy who was trying to pull weeds while holding onto his walker. So I pulled over and we asked him if he needed a hand. He said no and we got talking and we talked to him for an hour about the church and about life and what not. Turns out he had been taught by missionaries before. So we might try and stop by him again.

     I'll throw in another cat story for you mom. We saw scratch eye, the one eyed cat, sleeping in the grass so I snuck up behind him and got a hold of his tail and threw him a few feet. He hissed so loud I thought he was gonna attack me. It was crazy. Then This gray cat was giving me the glare so I got a pvc pipe and a nerf dart and I blew into it and shot the dart. Hit him straight in the head. The dart didn't have a needle in the end so he barely even moved. Also one of the cats had its kittens so we are gonna have even more cats around here! I think we have 9 adult cats right now.

     I'm not sure if anything else happened that was funny. Oh yeah I got to feed a baby cow named Kevin after dinner at the bishops house, so that was awesome. Also this little girl got up to share her

testimony and she said, "we got a llama to protect our chickens from coyotes and Hawks... And it reminded me of how Jesus protects us from bad stuff." It was great. Apparently llamas are guards for chickens.

     We also have a new family who are very less active members who want to come back to church. He is a medical marijuana farmer. We haven't met him yet, but I will write about how it goes down. Love you all. Talk to you on Sunday.

Love,

Elder Garfield

April 25, 2016

This week we went on exchanges. I stayed here in our area for the 3rd exchange in a row. Elder Norris came to our area from Molalla. He is a really odd cookie so it was a painful 24 hours. On Saturday morning we got to go see a Joseph smith historian. He was an interesting guy and he had a bunch of artifacts we could look at. It was cool. He told a story about Joseph smith I don't remember ever hearing before. All the people were living in a swampy area and there was a malaria outbreak. Almost everyone was sick. Then he healed everyone. His point in sharing the story was that we shouldn't make Joseph smith seem like an ordinary guy because he wasn't. He performed miracles, he saw God and Jesus Christ, and he restored the true church to the earth. 

I told Elder Goodrich that never before on my mission has someone pointed to their no soliciting sign and slammed the door. A few minutes later it happened three times in a row. Then the next day it happened again. So I'm never saying anything like that again. I hit 7 months yesterday so that was cool. Time is flying. I've been out 7 months, but it only feels like 7 months! Haha. 

Another cool thing that happened. You may have read previously that we have a ton of stray cats around the duplex. So I have been tormenting them in many ways. For example, shooting them with darts that have thumbtacks in the end, poking them with sticks, poking them with my iPad, grabbing their tails and tossing them, I tried to spear one with a knife taped to the end of a stick, and I always sneak up on them and scare them. So they aren't very friendly to us. They see our car pull up and they run away... So we have been trying to gain back their trust so that we can betray them and kill them. An investigator gave us this canned tuna so we have been feeding them. But I didn't want to wait to gain their trust so I put some on our balcony and left the sliding door open. Then I concealed myself with a blanket and lied in wait. The cat came up and was eating the tuna and I jumped out and tried to catch it. I failed. So now they are very hesitant to eat food from us too. 

Another funny story. Elder Goodrich is the district leader so he has to call the people in our district on Sunday night. This time I called the sisters and was messing with them pretending to be elder Goodrich. They new it was me though. Whenever we text them or call them if it's serious they know it's elder Goodrich. If it funny or weird they assume it was me. Which is true. Anyway one thing led to another and they said they need a blender so we said we would give them ours since we never use it. I wanted to put it to use one more time so I made a will it blend video with an orange, a tie, and a thing of Vaseline I found in our cupboard which is weird. I think the blender might be broken though.

That's all I got for ya. Have a great week.

Love,

Elder Garfield

April 18, 2016

This week was pretty swell. It is Canby clean up here which means that everyone puts their junk out on the curb and the. It sits for a week and the garbage people will pick it up. Which means that it's free week. We can just go around and pick up the stuff that we want. So I got a ripstick and a bike ramp! I can't wait to hurt myself on it! So this week was the Ivy pull. The new zone leader who is way uptight didn't want to make the Ivy pull a zone service because it's "not effective". So it was just us and one pair of sisters and random people from the community. It was awesome as usual. We pulled lots of Ivy. My companion said maybe we shouldn't go and I told him that I will go pull Ivy myself if I have to. I also told him that the war on Ivy isn't gonna solve itself. After that he agreed that it was a good idea. We had a great time. We did service at the adult center serving food. There is this old lady there who really grinds my gears. Her name is June nice, but she is not nice at all. She was as usual being really bossy and rude so I was starting to get frustrated with her. I passed out salads to all the tables and then was standing there waiting holding the tray with salads on it. And an old lady who was also volunteering came and grabbed two salads for herself. Then June gets all sassy with me and said "you know you could walk around so she doesn't have to go back and forth". I said "yeah.. I know.. I already passed salads out to everyone! she just wanted those for herself..." I was getting really Freakin angry. The adult center calls us and wants us to do service then We get there and Judy is getting all up in my business. Oh man I was so mad I had to go chill in the back for a couple minutes. I ain't got time for that. You can serve your dang food yourself! So that was cool. Also what made me mad this week is we got a new stake presidency and this guy wants the missionaries to sing at every dinner appointment!!! and every lesson with our investigators!!! He must be out of his mind! I hope I get transferred out of this stake asap! I will not be a little traveling performer monkey that goes from member to member singing carols! We went on a hike today and it was long and tiring, but the view was cool. You could see all the surrounding mountains in Washington and here. Mt St. Helens, Mt hood, and like 3 others I don't know their names. It was pretty fun. We taught quite a few lessons this week. We had 6 member presents which is actually a lot for us in this area. However, despite all our best efforts no investigators came to sacrament meeting! I another funny story we talked to this guy while we were on exchanges. I was with Elder Hintz. We talked to him and he was a redneck from Molalla. He told us about his lazy good for nothing son who couldn't work for nothin so when he was 15 he told his mom if you think you can do better then do it yourself... And she left. And he told his son that there wasn't enough room in Molalla for the both of the. so his son better leave the state or he will run him out of town. We said cool. Way to tell it to her straight. He said yup. We asked if we could come by his house sometime. He said sure if you can make it past the pitbull and my shotgun. We said we would dodge the bullets. He said you won't dodge nothin. I'll hit you straight in the face. He was so crazy haha. That's all for today. Hope you had a great week.

Love,

 Elder Garfield