Busy Week in Portland!

Hi everyone!

So here's what happened this week ...

Monday:

We went to a park to contact and there was a summer youth activities thing going on that happens every week day. They had a bunch of stuff to do that was open to anyone, so we went and played ping pong with some kids and met some really cool people.

Tuesday:

We had a couple of lessons and then we went on splits with some brethren from the Elder's Quorum in the evening. I was able to give the Sister with an amputated leg a blessing and Elder Parker went and contacted referrals. It was a cool experience to do that. 

Wednesday: 

We had our first Zone Meeting and my first interview with the Mission President (President Ballard is awesome). It was cool to see all the missionaries in our Zone. Between the meeting and my interview I was able to go on a split with one of the AP's (Elder Andersen) and we went to a park and contacted. Elder Andersen is the man! He is so good at talking with people and I learned a lot from him. Later that evening, we went and played basketball with our investigator, Gilbert! He is in his 50's and he is way good at bball! We played 21. I got lucky and barely won the first game and then he kicked our butts the second game haha. He is the nicest guy ever and he always buys us food whenever we see him. 

Thursday:

We had some lessons and one was with Carissa. Things are going well with her, but she is trying to juggle three jobs and she can't make it to church :,(  but hopefully things will work out.

Friday:

We had exchanges!  My companion switched places with another missionary in a different area and spent the day and night over there and I was with Elder Roundy for Friday and half of Saturday. We went to the store that Gilbert owns. He owns a record album store that also sells DVDs, CDs VHS and cassettes. It's on the top 20 for stores to visit in Portland! He was working and we went in and he was so excited to see us! He started introducing us to everyone in the store, it was awesome haha. We met a lot of his friends and some random people in the store. We gave out like three pass along cards and a Book of Mormon! And then of course he bought us food. He is so great! We then did some service for a Sister in our ward. She had a bunch of blackberry vines that she needed removed, and those things have some nasty thorns let me tell ya. We then had a couple more lessons and one was with two teenage boys that just got baptized and have pet parakeets. We held them and one of them pooped on my hand of course.

 Visiting Gilbert (and Gilbert's friend, Matt) at his record store!

Pooping parakeet (haha)!!!

Sunday:

We had one investigator show at church!  Better than zero!!  Later in the evening, we had a lesson with Annette and she is so close to a baptismal date! She has come so far and is doing so awesome and just needs to take the next step!

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Hill

Tyler's Highlights and Hints this week!

* We are back to bikes this week.... Lame!

* Our church building is like 80 years old and it has been added onto at least six different times. It has a basement with a bunch of classrooms and a nursery and then there is a tiny room in the library that has a ladder that goes to different ladders and goes up to the steeple. They used to have a bell up there, but it was removed so we climbed up three different sketchy ladders to get up there and on the walls a bunch of missionaries signed their names, so we did that.

* Watch the Mormon Message:  "My New Life" on lds.org

* Thanks again for the letters and emails! I really, really appreciate them. They make my day!