Happy Birthday!

Hi everyone!

This week was busy! We have been teaching a lot of lessons and it's been good! My new companion, Elder Kirk, is from Emmit, Idaho. He has been out for 20 months, and we have been doing pretty well together. 

There were some crazy things that happened this week. So on Wednesday night we came home and we were planning and we get a call from some elders serving in the Ward next to us (they also live in the same apartment complex as us so they're just a couple doors down). And one of them told us to come over now, and he sounded serious so we booked it over there. Apparently the missionaries had gotten into a huge fight with each other and they broke a bunch of chairs and a bookshelf in the apartment. We were like, "oh crap! we have to do an exchange with them before they kill each other." So one of them came and stayed with me at our apartment and Elder Kirk stayed there. President Ballard drove out here and handled it the next day haha. It was nuts.

On Thursday, we did splits with the High Priests and I went with Brother Nash. We went to go visit a less-active lady and there were two doors to this duplex she lived in and Bro Nash didn't know which one was hers so we knocked on both. One didn't answer and the next door a guy opened it. His name was Jim and he looked like the definition of an Oregonian hippie. He said that the lady we were looking for lived next door but she wasn't there. So we started talking to him about his religious beliefs and we had a 45 min conversation with him and he had some interesting views. He said the Second Coming is going to be this year and that there will be "fire in the skies". Brother Nash thought it was funny, but he said that we could come back! So we will go visit him again... 

We have started teaching this lady named Martha, and she has never heard of the Book of Mormon, but she grew up reading the Bible. She keeps telling us how fascinating it is that Jesus Christ came to the Americas and that people sailed over here from Jerusalem. She always gets so excited talking about it, it's awesome. We have also been doing lots of service. This week we had to put in an irrigation system in a guys backyard and then we spent three days cutting down blackberry vines for some people. You're not in Oregon if you don't cut blackberries at least once a month for service.

Sister Torrie photo-bombed one of the pictures! 

"Doing service with all the blackberry vines.  We cut a hole through the middle of the bush."

And I turn 21 today! Our Ward Mission Leader asked us what we were doing for my birthday and I told him we are going clubbing and that he was invited haha. He said he is down....

Thank you so much for all of the birthday packages and cards and emails!! I really appreciate it and it means a lot to me:) 

"Opening presents this morning.  Elder Kirk got me a tie!"

"The Sisters and a couple of Elders got me some birthday gifts!"

Hope you all have a great week! 

Elder Hill

Same area, new companion

Hi everyone!

Well, I'm staying in Sandy! I'm getting a new companion named Elder 
Kirk from Idaho. I'm super excited to be staying Sandy! Hopefully we 
will be able to finally get a baptism here. 

This past week nothing super exciting happened. We did a lot of 
service and taught some lessons. On Sunday, I was able to Skype 
home and see the family! It was so awesome. Crazy how fast the time is 
flying by, it feels like I just Skyped home not too long ago.  
Elder Wheeler and I had to teach a lesson in church at the last minute 
and it's really cool how you learn to just get up start talking about 
a gospel principle and just go with it. It was fun. 
Sorry for the super short email! Not a lot of time today and not a lot 
to talk about. But I love and miss you all and I'm grateful for all 
the support I receive from everyone. Thank you for all of the 
birthday cards and packages. This is my last time emailing as a 20 
year old! 

Have a great week! 
Elder Hill 

Elder Kendrick & Tyler doing the wrap challenge

Meeting Elder Ballard for the second time (lucky!!!)

 Check out Mt. Hood in the background ...

Our "new investigator" Snoop Dog reading the Book of Mormon :)

10 Months!

Hello everyone!

So this past week I can't really remember much about what happened. 
Weeks are going by so fast they all seem to blur together.  But I did 
hit my 10 month mark so I am in the double digits! Crazy! Sometimes I 
feel like I just came out. 

This week had its up and downs. Our baptism that was supposed 
to happen this Saturday isn't going to happen anymore because he 
doesn't want to keep some of the standards, so that is a big bummer. 
We did set a baptismal date with this couple that we taught last 
week ... the lady that we taught in the rain! We set a date with her and 
her husband for the 28th of May so that was exciting. 

Something cool that happened this week was that we had an appointment 
fall through at like 8 in the evening and so we were out in the middle 
of nowhere trying to find a less-active and they weren't home. So we 
were like let's knock on all the houses on this street, maybe a miracle 
will happen (it was 8:30 at night and there were like 3 houses on this 
long road). So we walked to them and knocked them all and no one was 
home except for this last house. We knocked and a lady answered the door 
and she had just had a baby six days ago and she had three other kids as 
well. She said that they have been looking for a church to join and 
they want to learn more. So a miracle did happen!! It was pretty 
sweet. We are finding lots of people to teach we just need to get them 
to church. 

Things are still great out here in Mount Hood! The members are awesome 
and the weather is getting better!... And Mother's Day is coming up so I 
get to Skype home! 

Hope everyone has a good week!!  
Elder Hill 

 The Elders got to make a pen!

Sweet hike, sweet pics!

Hi everyone!

We just got done with a super sweet hike!! It was 7 miles there and back to a place called Ramona Falls. It was super cool and our whole Zone went. It was up the mountain so it was snowing too, but it was super fun. 

So this past week on Tuesday, we went to the other side of our area to a place called Government Camp. It's right next to Mt. Hood. It took us an hour to get there and we wanted to go find a potential investigator out there, but it was the wrong address haha. So we tried to talk to some people, but it's more of a tourist attraction town so no one was interested at all. We went into a gift shop and the cashier goes, "are you handing those out!?" She's pointing to the Book of Mormons in our hands. We were just like, "uhhh yeah, you want one??" She said yes and it turns out she grew up Mormon, but stopped going when she was 9 years old. We had a really good conversation with her! It's crazy the places that you will find people. 

So our Ward mission leader, Bro Smith, is the man. He is one of the coolest, but most spiritual people, out there. We had dinner at his house and we had a really good spiritual conversation and Bro. Smith was talking about some awesome stuff and bearing his testimony, and then at the end he was like, "you guys wanna go play some foosball?" So we went out and Elder Wheeler and I played foosball against him and his wife haha. 

Friday we had some really good lessons. We went to see a less-active guy named Scott and he had really been having a hard time with some things. After we talked about, I felt impressed to share with him a Mormon Message, "Hope Ya Know I Had a Hard Time" because it talks about a lot of the things he was going through. He started crying while watching it and said, "wow that was incredible, I really needed that." He was really glad that we came over to visit him. Then later we had a lesson in the evening with a couple investigators that we have been working with off and on. We knocked on their door and Josh, the person we were supposed to meet with was sleeping, but his girlfriend Katie wanted to talk for a little bit. So she comes outside and we are sitting on her porch and it is already sprinkling a little bit outside. We start talking to her and we asked about her faith in God and she just broke down and started crying and saying how if God is real then why do her family members keep dying? It was really sad. We told her about the Plan of Salvation and the purpose of life. While we are talking it starts to rain harder and harder, and it's just raining a ton and she's crying and it was just a crazy situation. We promised her that God is there, that He loves her and is watching over her and that she will see her loved ones again. We bore our testimonies and by the end of the lesson she said that she wanted to meet with us more. It was a cool experience! 

Thank you for all the emails and support!! I really appreciate it! Send me pics if you want! I love getting emails and pictures! 

Have a good week! 

Elder Hill

Replica of the gun that was used to shoot Joseph Smith 

Tracting in the boonies works, Elder Wheeler

Hello!

So the transfer is already half over. It's crazy how fast the weeks are going by. This week was alright, it wasn't as good as last week, but it still went pretty good. 

I told Elder Wheeler that I am convinced tracting in the boonies works for finding people and so on one of the days we went out into the woods and started tracting the houses out there and it was the worst haha. No one was home or they weren't interested at all so Elder Wheeler didn't believe me that it worked, but then I suggested the next day to try one more time and we found two new investigators!  So it does work even out in the middle of the wilderness haha. We knocked on this one house and a younger guy answered and we started talking to him. We asked if he had any Mormon friends and he said no, but he has been wanting to learn more! Elder Wheeler and I were just like wait what? That never happens haha. We also get to take a lot of pictures with different animals out in the wilderness tracting haha. 

We had Zone Conference on Thursday which was good. I always love seeing missionaries from the other Zones that I haven't seen in forever. 

We did a lot of service this week too. We helped make a nature walk for the blind. Not sure how that works, but hey it was still fun to help out. 

On Sunday our investigator John, the one that wants to be baptized because he doesn't want to be damned, announced in Sunday School class to everyone that he is getting baptized. So that was pretty cool! 

Thanks for the emails and support!  Love and miss you guys!

Elder Hill

Spiritual Thought: "You and I may speak most eloquently of spiritual things. We may impress people with our keen intellectual interpretation of religious topics. We may rhapsodize about religion and “dream of [our] mansion above.” But if our faith does not change the way we live--if our beliefs do not influence our daily decisions--our religion is vain, and our faith, if not dead, is certainly not well and is in danger of eventually flatlining." -President Uchtdorf 

I like this quote from President Uchtdorf's talk in the last conference because it basically says that if we have faith in God and Jesus Christ then we need to act like it. Our actions need to be in accordance with our faith, because if they aren't then what is the point of having faith. If we believe in something and it doesn't change who we are and what we do, then what is the point of believing.

"Every single soul is precious" - Elder Ballard

Hi everyone!

So this week was super solid! We taught over 20 lessons this week which is the standard of excellence for our Mission! We were crazy busy all week.

Tuesday

Tuesday we met with a lot of different investigators, and we have one investigator named John who has been meeting with missionaries for a while now. He is a war vet and a little older and is a little slow with things. We had a really good lesson on baptism and we asked him if he would like to be baptized. He said, "every time I wanna do something, the government won't let me do it!!" His brother, who is a member, was like, "John, the government isn't involved in this." And he said, "oh, in that case I will think about it." Hahaha. 

Wednesday

Wednesday we had a really good day and taught six lessons! 

Thursday

Thursday we were supposed to go on a split with our Ward Mission Leader, but he had to cancel at the last minute and we felt prompted to go see this less active lady. So we went to see her and as we were visiting with her, her granddaughter walks in and joins us. She is a non-member and starts asking us questions and stuff and she said she wants us to come over and teach her more! It's crazy how the Lord puts people in our path 'cause we weren't even supposed to be at that house! 

Friday

Friday we stopped by another potential investigator that we had seen before and she told us to come back later, and so we did. She let us in this time and we had such a good lesson with her. The Spirit was strong and we asked her if she would be baptized if she came to know the Book of Mormon was true and she said yes. It was awesome!! Friday in the evening we went to go see John again and we talked a lot about baptism and we talked about how we have a clean slate when we are baptized and that all of our sins and guilt are gone, and he was like "wait, seriously?" We told him that it could happen for him if he was baptized and he got super excited and so we set a date for May 7th for his baptism! 

The work here is going great! We are super busy, but we had interviews with the Mission President on Wednesday and he told me not to get comfortable in this area because he has other things planned for me. I have no idea what that means, but I was a little bummed that I won't be staying in the Ward for that long. We will see what happens!! 

Saturday

Saturday Elder Ballard from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came and spoke to all the missionaries in our Mission. It was so sweet. I was able to shake his hand again and he said, "Good Morning Elder." It was the most spiritually powerful good morning ever hahaha. It was really cool to hear from an apostle.

Our Mission President's wife, Sister Ballard, had her dad, Ken Garff, speak to us as well.  President Garff is a former Temple President. They gave some really good counsel and instruction. It really helped me gain a new perspective on different things about life in general... One of the things that stuck out to me the most that Elder Ballard said was, "every single soul is precious. A great price was paid for each one." It's just amazing to think about how God loves ALL of His children. Not just some, and not just those that are good people. He loves every single soul equally and the Atonement is there for everyone. Christ suffered for all. We have this knowledge and so it is our responsibility to share it with others and to bring others back to Heavenly Father. Christ gave his life so that everyone could live with God again, so the least we can do is help others along their way. "Have faith, have hope, live like His Son, help others on their way." 

Sunday

Sunday I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting and I finished the book, Jesus the Christ! Hallelujah! 

I really appreciate all the emails and letters!! Thank you so much for all the love and support! 

Have a good week! 

Elder Hill

This is one of our Ward member's backyards ... the Sandy River!!

General Conference, Ziplining & Hank

Hello from the wilderness of Oregon! 

So my first week in the Sandy River area was awesome! Our area is enormous and it takes about 2 hours to drive from the west border to the east border. We cover the town of Sandy and then everything to the east until Mt. Hood. The members here are awesome and they love missionaries! They are also very missionary minded and try to help us out. We have been teaching this girl named Jasmine who is 13 yrs old and she is getting baptized on Saturday! She is awesome and really wants to be baptized; her grandma is a recent convert. We have also been working with some others that could have baptismal dates soon so we will see. Once you leave the town of Sandy all the houses are basically out in the middle of nowhere and everyone has huge acres of land. 

This is a view from the edge of Sandy to Mt. Hood. We cover everything you can see in the picture or as Elder Wheeler says, "our area is everything the light touches!" haha

Tuesday

Tuesday we did a lot of service.  We helped a member do some yard work and then worked at the food bank in town. We also were able to go visit some people so I could get introduced. 

Wednesday

Wednesday we had a couple lessons and then in the evening the Ward was having a mutual activity about missionary work so we went and they asked us a bunch of questions about missionary life.  The youth here are awesome! 

Thursday

Every Thursday we have a Book of Mormon class with anyone who wants to come so we did that and then in the evening we went on splits and I went with Bro. Shaffer. We went to go visit this family who used to take the lessons, but they hadn't been taking them recently and so we went to go see them and they want to start meeting with us again. So that was exciting. 

Friday

So apparently in the Mt. Hood Zone, missionaries like to pull pranks on each other ...  We were doing service with some of the Sisters in the Zone and Elder Wheeler wanted to prank them so we did haha.  Then, later that night when we got home, all of our bed sheets were in the freezer! They swear they didn't do it... So the prank wars are apparently starting. 

Saturday

Saturday was General Conference! We watched the first two sessions at a member's house, the Stevens, and then the Priesthood session at the Stake Center. The Priesthood session was awesome!! I really liked Elders' Nelson and Uchtdorf's talks. There were so many things said that answered questions I had.

Sunday

Sunday we went over to the Smiths to watch the morning session and they live out in the middle of nowhere. They have a zipline that goes across a giant pond in their front yard and so after the morning session we went to go ride the zipline haha. It was sweet. We watched the afternoon session with Jasmine and her grandma. Her grandma is hilarious!  She is a recent convert and says the funniest things. In the evening, we visited and contacted people. 

Have a great week!

Elder Hill

Tyler's Hints & Highlights this Week!

*Elder Ballard is coming to visit our Mission again this Saturday so that should be awesome. -

*Hopefully you all enjoyed conference! If you didn't see it, then you can watch it online!

This is Hank, one of our less actives enormous dogs. He is scared to go 

through doors so he walks through them backwards ...hahaha