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

April 11, 2016

This week was pretty swell. It didn't rain all week which is incredible. It's raining right now though. I got a lot of stories so it could be a long one.

    First of all. We were knocking doors, which we do a lot of, and his guy opened up the door. He was an older guy. He brings up the verse in revelations that say not it add or take away from this book. Which is silly in and of itself since the bible isn't arranged chronologically and it says the same thing in Deuteronomy. My companion said "oh yeah in revelations chapter 22" and he said why don't you come in for a minute. So we did and he quizzed us. He asked us a bunch of questions about the bible and what we believe trying to get us to trip up, but we didn't. He couldn't stump us so we basically taught the first lesson, he refused to accept the challenge to read from the book of Mormon. He gave us water and prayed for us which was nice. But he prayed that we would be able to find the truth haha. We were like no worries there we already found it. Also that is the first time in 6.5 months of Tracting I have been let into someone's house right away.

     Next story we set up a night for some youth to come to the church and play ball and hang out and bring nonmember friends. So we were there and then This girl ran out of the church and her two friends were chasing her and this kid came up to me and said "Deanne wants to kill herself so she ran out and that's why they are chasing her. Should I call the cops?" I said probably not. I could tell she

was just doing it for attention since she came back in the church smirking. So then a little later the cops show up and take her and talk to her and what not. So we had to stay there a while and wait for her grandma to come get her and for them to fill out a report. It was cray cray.

      Next story. We met Elder Ballard of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. We had an awesome meeting with him and got to shake his hand. He is a great speaker. There was one meeting where the bishops

and ward mission leaders came and he opened it up for questions this guy got roasted. He got up and started asking this long question about passalong cards. "I have this neighbor I have been working on for 30 years and he is only interested in the tabernacle choir and general conference came around and I noticed there are not general conference passalong cards. And there aren't passalong cards for the tabernacle choir..." And he went on for a good 5 or 6 minutes until elder Ballard interrupted him and said "I got it". He then Told him that passalong cards are not a substitute for just taking the missionaries to talk to him and introducing him to the Book of Mormon. He laughed and said I will ask if the first presidency wants to do passalong cards for conference, but let's not over complicate missionary work. It was hilarious. He talked a lot about missionary work obviously and he told a few great stories. He told one when he was a mission president in Canada and he got a new elder. He had an interview and the elder told him that he would be the best missionary he ever had. He asked why and the elder told him that before he left his dad was diagnosed with cancer and he would likely not survive when he got back. But he promised God that if he would be the best missionary he ever had if he would save his dad. He sent the elder to the northernmost part of Canada do it was winter. He said the temp could be down to -60 with the wind chill. He and his companion were at dinner and an hour passed by. The elder said we have to go and his trainer said no we don't we don't have any appointments this evening. He said no we have to go. They got their coats on, left the warm house and outside on the doorstep the new missionary told him he would have to help him save his dad. So they went and knocked doors. People would invite them in so they wouldn't freeze to death and he would stay long enough to find out if they were interested and then move on to the next house. Pretty crazy. And his dad lived. The end.

       Next story we were in a lesson with his lady in her late 20s. She has clearly had a rough go at things and has blue hair. She told us all about her crazy boyfriend troubles and how he had sex with his baby mama while they were together and she almost did meth and her friend said its just like weed, but it helps you focus and she was like, what? I'm not gonna do meth and she was feeling down one day, so she took ten shots and then got in a fight with her boyfriend and something Possessed her and she picked up a sharp rock and was going to kill her boyfriend and then her inner good self was like no so she dropped the Rock and ran away so she would hurt him and then she got picked up by the cops and they said she wasn't drunk, but she was like what I took ten shots. Then she told us a bunch of other crazy stories and eventually we taught her a lesson and committed her to be baptized and she said she would. So that was awesome. She said she met with missionaries before and like having them talk to her because she felt good when they came by and she lost contact when she moved and she was praying the Mormons would knock on her door. Pretty cool.

     That is all the stories I care to write down. I hope everyone is doing well. Have a great week.

Ps. If you can, will you send me a few short sleeve white shirts. It's starting to get warm. Thank you.

Love,

Elder Garfield

April 4, 2016

Hey everybody. This week was pretty swell. I have my new companion Elder Goodrich. I am still in Canby, Oregon. We did a lot of Tracting/ service this week. We got a text from a less active member I've never met saying "can you possibly mow my lawn?" We said yes of course and we figured it would probably take a half hour. She lives in a mobile home park so the lawns are small. We get there and it turns out she has the biggest lawn in the neighborhood and it is literally 3 feet high in some places. It was a jungle of grass, dandelions, flowers, and who knows what else. After finding her lawn mower we tried to start it. It wouldn't start. I worked some magic and got it started after about 15 minutes. Then we started. My companion started mowed a little bit and wanted to switch off. So I mowed half the backyard and then gave it back to him and he mowed a little bit and then wanted to switch off so I just mowed the rest. It was hard work! The mower didn't have any drive so we had to just push it. It took two hours! It was ridiculous. A couple funny stories from this week.

      We were Tracting and I could smell someone was smoking pot. It got stronger and I said to my companion I think it's coming from this house. We knocked on it and this guy answered stoned out of his freaking mind. I talked to him and asked him if he had ever heard the message of the restoration that the missionaries share. He said "nah bro... You got it all wrong". After we thought we should have messed with him. Imagine what he would think if he was high and two guys in white shirts and ties started pretending to speak Japanese or started dancing... He would be so confused. We also talked with a Buddhist and a Jehovah's Witness and a pagan. The pagan I have written about before

a long time ago. We went back to visit her again. She is still insane. She told us she is a white witch. She has been brewing stuff to make her not sick. It hasn't been working... We talked to her for an hour. She said she does some voodoo and some Satan worship, but not a lot of Satan worship. She also told us she is into anime (boy on boy) which is nasty. She said "God forbid I don't watch it for that. I just watch it for the story behind it" haha. Good grief it was a weird week. None of them were interested, but it was funny.

      We had some success too. We set a baptismal date with a woman who has been investigating for a year and a half. She is scheduled to get baptized on the 30th so I'm super excited about that. We also had a lesson with a lady and her mom. They are actually pretty awesome. They said we could come back and teach them again. Other than that not much else happened. We watched conference and that was awesome. It was great to hear from all the church leaders. I liked President Monson's talk "Choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong" sometimes or most of the time choosing the right thing is difficult, but it is always possible.

Love you all,

Elder Garfield

March 28, 2016

I heard about the missionaries in Belgium. It has been a good for us because some people answer the door just to say they are sorry for the missionaries. It has been kinda funny people getting the story all mixed up. Some people say there was 1 or 2 or 3 missionaries. Some people said, "yeah I'm sorry for the missionaries that got hurt in France". It is funny how information gets confused so easily. That's probably the same reason as why there needs to be a prophet on the earth to guide the church. I've almost finished the new testament and it is funny reading all the epistles Paul wrote to the different people. In just a short time after Christ died. There was already so much confusion. The Corinthians forgot about the resurrection. They didn't think people would be resurrected anymore. Paul had to set that straight. And stuff like that happening all over. Especially without the type of communication we have today. It was a serious challenge to try and keep everyone on the same page. This week was pretty good. We did some tracting which is always fun... Not. We did find a lady who

said we could come back so that is awesome. And she seems like she is completely sane. So that is even better. We walked down this long driveway to go knock on a door and there was this German shepherd barking at us. No leash. No fence. I said hey, you think this dog will attack us. We said we would find out pretty soon. We walked up and it kept backing up so we could tell it was just scared and wouldn't attack. We knock on the door. We hear a older lady (55+) come around the corner angrily saying hello. I thought to myself "here we go"... She starts going off about how we can't just walk down people's driveways and knock on their doors and there was a dog barking and that should be a sign to not come further and that if she wasn't there we would have gotten attacked and we can't just go around knocking on people's doors. Especially in this neighborhood. Her "neighborhood" is

just a few random houses on a road in the middle of nowhere haha. So she was furious and wasn't interested, obviously. And her dog was really friendly. As she was telling us it would attack us I was petting it and it was licking me and leaning against me. I said "this dog right here"? She angrily said yes haha. Then we found a lady who was really nice and said we could come back right next door. We were knocking doors later that day and this guy answered. He looked really tough and had sleeves and was bald and buff. He was really nice. We asked him where he came from because he said he just moved in. He said "ummm... Prison". What do you say to that?!?!? We were like oh cool. We didn't really know what to say haha. He wasn't interested, but he was nice. Then his neighbor was a really flamboyant guy. He said he wasn't interested, "but (he put his hand on his heart) my humanity

extends beyond denominations so I am so sorry to hear about your friends in Brussels" it was kinda funny. He was super nice. Then His neighbors we knocked and they had really loud music playing. Some guy answered. He seemed a little bit tipsy. He wasn't interested. Then as we were knocking on the next door a lady from the loud music house opened the door and yelled "don't y'all pray to some guy on another planet!?!?" Uhhhh she's not entirely wrong I guess.  Then two more doors down. A lady was in her driveway. I ask her how she is doing. She says "don't bother guys" then she went in her garage and closed the garage door haha. So many interesting people in canby. So here is the transfer scoop. Transfers are today and elder hill is leaving. He is going to sandy. My new companion is Elder Goodrich. I don't know him at all so hopefully he is cool.

Love you all,

Elder Garfield

I heard dad is getting a new rail? Is that true? That's too bad about

Derryl. He is the dune legend. It sucks getting old.