Barbara's baptism!!!

Hello! 

 

So this past week was so crazy and exhausting.

Monday night we had a bonfire with the Ward at the bishops house which was really fun. I love the YSA Ward so much, the people here are awesome.

On Tuesday, we were going to visit a less-active guy and we knocked on his door and his roommates answered. They let us in and they asked us if we wanted to hold their pet snake. I was like yeah sure why not so I held their bell python snake and it bit me!!!....... Okay just kidding it didn't bite me, but it was really cool since that was my first time holding a snake haha.

Thursday, we had our Zone meeting and interviews with President Ballard. Since being a Zone Leader, I have been able to get to know President and work with him a lot more, and he is the best. He has helped me a lot and given me so much advice.. For Zone meeting Elder Craft and I had to prepare the whole meeting and the training. So the whole week on our downtime we were trying to get it all put together and what not. It was so stressful, but it went really well! 

 Selfie with Sister Ballard!

Missionaries with President Ballard?

Thursday evening we took Jordan Pregil, a recent convert, out with us to a couple of lessons but they both fell through. We didn't really have a back up plan so I pulled out my areabook on my iPad and I had a list of names of former investigators or people that were taught by missionaries in the past five years that we could go see. I was like, "Jordan, I'm gonna scroll through this list and when you feel prompted by the Spirit to stop on a person you say stop." So we did that and he stopped on a guy named Michael. So we go knock on Michael's door and he answers! (It's pretty rare that former investigators are ever home). We start talking to him and eventually his sister and girlfriend come to the door as well, and they are all interested in learning more and being taught! It was crazy cause that never happens! It was a cool miracle!

Friday was Barbara's baptism!! It was awesome! It was all the way out in Mt. Hood so it was an hour drive and we hit traffic so we were late, but they couldn't start the baptism until we got there since I was the one baptizing her haha! When we got there, Barbara had the biggest smile on her face. It was so great to see her after four months. I could tell she had changed so much and she was so happy! Right before the ordinance of the baptism, there was a musical number of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," the Spirit was so strong it was amazing.  I was just thinking about how Barbara was introduced to the gospel and the changes she made in her life and how much of a miracle it all was.  Baptizing her was awesome. Just like at Logan's baptism I once again felt that overwhelming feeling of God's love for His children and how He knows each of us individually and by name, and how proud He was of Barbara. It was such an incredible experience, and it has definitely changed my life!

 Tyler & the Sisters who taught Barbara at Barbara's baptism!

I hope you all enjoyed General Conference! It's like a rock concert for missionaries haha. I really enjoyed Elder Uchtdorf and Elder Ballard's talks. And I love the quote, "Be Ambitious for Christ!" I think that is something we can all do!

Love and miss you guys! Have a good week!

Elder Hill

Miracles continue to happen!

Hello everyone!! 

The weeks are just cruising by it's so crazy!...  This week we had about 4 days in a row of classic rainy Oregon weather.  I guess the rainy season is almost upon us:(  

This week was pretty good and I received the best news ever Saturday!! It comes from a pretty awesome story that maybe you remember me talking about 4 months ago, but I will tell it again cause there is more to it now....

So back in my last area out in Mount Hood, it was about my third week in the area (mid-April) and Elder Wheeler and I had dinner and shared a message with the Graves Family. They are an older couple in the Ward. We asked them at the end of the lesson, "who do you know who feels like God has abandoned them?" And they said they didn't know anyone at the moment, but just as we were about to head out the door Sister Graves says, "wait someone just popped into my mind, there is an older lady named Margaret Walton that I visit teach and she hasn't been to church in a really long time. Go see her, she could use a boost in faith."

So we go see Margaret the next day and it was a good lesson but nothing really came out of it, and she wasn't interested in coming to church. A couple days later we are by Margaret's house again and we feel prompted to stop by. So we drop in to say hi and we end up meeting her non-member daughter, Trina! We have a great conversation with her and she said she was interested in learning more and we setup a return appointment to come back to teach her! So we are all pumped and excited cause we thought that this must be the reason we were supposed to stop by!  We go back a couple days later and she say,s "guys I'm actually not that interested."... We were super bummed, but we told her that if she ever needed help with any service or anything then she could call us. She said she might need help in a week with something.

So a week later Trina calls us and she says that she needs help doing service at one of her friends homes in Damascus. We said "absolutely!"  We go over to her friends, Craig and Barbara, and we did yard-work with Trina at their house. We were able to have small gospel conversations with Craig and Barbara here and there but they weren't too interested.

Well this service at Craig and Barbara's house became a weekly thing. Each week for about 7 weeks Elder Kirk (my new comp at the time) and I would cut down blackberry bushes for them and each week we started sharing more and more with Craig and Barbara until they both had their own Books of Mormon and said that they wanted to come to church! It was so awesome!! So we call the Damascus Sister Missionaries that covered the area and they started trying to teach them.

Well I then got transferred a week later to my current area and never really heard anything about them until this past Saturday (4 months since I last saw them).  I got a call from the Damascus Sister Missionaries saying that Barbara is getting baptized this coming Friday and she wants me to baptize her!!!!! WHAT!? I almost cried I was so happy hearing all this. I couldn't believe it!! I immediately went into the other room and dropped on my knees and started thanking Heavenly Father for this incredible miracle, and allowing me to be an instrument in His hands to help find Barbara.

It's so insane to think that it all started with our little dinner message in April with the Graves' and how Sister Graves was prompted at the last second to tell us to visit an inactive lady, which eventually led to Barbara being baptized this Friday.  Every single prompting that was received to go see different people was so we would be lead to Barbara. I know without a doubt that God knows His children..... every single one. He knows where they are and how to find them. He knows each one of us individually and has a specific plan designed for each of us. I know He lives and is our loving Father. Miracles continue to happen!

Elder Craft had an interview with President Ballard at the mission home and I was telling Sister Ballard that story and she thought it was so cool haha. It was kind of funny just chilling with Sister Ballard during Elder Crafts interview. Sister Ballard had to leave though and I asked her if she needed me to do any dishes or anything and she said yeah that would be great. So I did the Ballard's dishes haha and I took a selfie.

Everything else is going great! We are just trying to find people to teach! Our investigators are doing really good! Trying to get 'em baptized!

Have a great week! Love and miss you all!!

Elder Hill

Hello everyone!

It was a pretty good first week of the transfer! Lots of cool things have been happening. We have been working with one of our investigators, Zach, and he has changed his life so much. He had been in jail a couple of different times, he used to drink a ton and party a lot, and now he has quit all of that. He is working on quitting smoking now. He has been reading a chapter of the Book of Mormon every day and he hasn't missed a single week of church the past two months! It's incredible to see him change and to see how his countenance is totally different. He has more light in his eyes and he is so much happier now. He wants to be baptized but has to wait a while for certain reasons, but he is doing awesome. He said the opening prayer in one of our lessons and he said, "I want you to know God that I know the Book of Mormon is true and that this your true church on the earth. And that Joseph Smith is your prophet and so is Thomas S. Monson. I believe it is all true.".. It was so awesome!... 

On Sunday, we had a new member fireside at the temple visitors center. There were a few recent converts who spoke and the missionaries brought their investigators and other people. The Zone Leaders are in charge of putting the meeting together so we got to set it all up and I had to conduct which was kinda fun. The meeting was really cool! Being able to hear the recent converts testimonies and conversion stories was awesome. Zach came with us and after the meeting we walked around the temple, and he loved it! He wants to do his family history work now and have his ancestors baptized.

Zach & Tyler at the Portand Oregon Temple

Interesting story: On Wednesday we were out tracting and the second door we knock on this guy opens it. He says, "hey gentlemen would you like to come in or should we talk out here?" Elder Craft and I look at each other and we were just like yeah we would love to come in! So we go in, sit down, and this guy is just super nice and everything. We thought he was a member cause this never happens haha! So I was looking everywhere for a sign a that this guy was a member but there was none, and then I saw an entire bookshelf of religious books and different bible books and stuff. I was just thinking 'oh no'. The only people who let us in and have this many religious books are bible bashers (people who try to prove us wrong by quoting the bible and just arguing). So we are chatting with him and he is playing dumb a little bit.  He asks if we are Mormons and if we are on our mission and all this stuff and then he starts pointing out different points of doctrine that we believe that he thinks aren't right. So of course he starts quoting scriptures from the bible and talking about how we aren't true Christians, and he just starts getting worse and worse. He eventually said, "I'm just going to be blunt, you two are both liars. You are brainwashed into believing all these ridiculous lies. Joseph Smith was a lunatic and a liar. So I suggest you stop going around lying to everyone you see.... If you actually want to go to heaven then you are going to have to break away from this blasphemy religion you are brainwashed into following."... Ouch.. Elder Craft and I held our own pretty good. We basically proved all of his theories about Mormons wrong by quoting the bible, and I just said, "look, have you ever read the Book of Mormon? Do you even know what it is about?.... Exactly! You can't claim it is a lie when you know nothing about it. And, do you honestly think that I would leave my family, friends, and entire life behind for two whole years to come tell a lie? Or because I am brainwashed?... I can promise you that I am not brainwashed. I have diligently studied and prayed to know if this true. I know the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God by the power of the Holy Ghost and you can come to know the same thing if you simply open up your heart."...... It was pretty intense. We told him we had to leave, but we left on a good note talking about Christ.... Gotta love bible bashers. It always strengthens my testimony though! If you receive a confirmation from the spirit that something is true then there is nothing that can prove that wrong. 

Hope you have a great week!! 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Hill

Tyler & Elder Peterson (left MTC on the same day!)

 Zone Conference & MSL

 Laser tag ...

P-day at Wunderland Amusement Park

It's all a trial of our faith ...

Hi everyone!

So this past week was the last week of the transfer and I am staying in the area!!! Elder Craft and I are staying together here in the YSA Ward! I'm so pumped to be here for another six weeks, I love this Ward!!

 

Tyler & Elder Craft with their different Districts

This week was a little slower - lots of meetings and stuff so nothing too exciting happened this week. On P-day last Monday, we went with some other Elders and Sisters and we hiked up to Pittock Mansion which is like a really old mansion in Portland. There was a really sweet view! 

Earlier in the week I received a package in the mail from some random guy named John Pennington (never heard of or met him before) and it was a pack of CDs and there was a note that said, "Dear Missionary, I hope these will help you with your teaching. Good luck." So we listened to them and they are basically just him talking about deep doctrine haha it was interesting. 

President Ballard's birthday was on Friday so Sister Ballard called us and wanted our Zone to come surprise him! So we got everyone together and we all went to President's house and sang to him and had cake. It was super fun! The Ballard's are the best. 

Yeah, nothing too crazy happened this week but we are working with a lot of investigators and having a lot of good lessons! Our investigators and members are the best! I have made so many good friends here in this Ward! 

This week I was reading the story of Job and it is one of my favorite stories! It's crazy to think about everything Job went through.  He lost his children, livestock, house, wealth, he was smitten with a terrible disease, and none of his friends wanted anything to do with him. And even after all this his faith in God never wavered. But even after He prayed to God asking for help, God didn't answer him as part of his test for Job. So after everything Job had gone through, God even stopped answering his prayers and the heavens were closed to him. And then Job says in Chapter 13:15, "though he slay me, yet will I trust in him"... Are you kidding me!? Even after God stopped talking to him, and he lost literally everything, Job still trusted God. Talk about faith. I know that if we can all have faith like Job did, then Heavenly Father will bless us 10 fold just like he did Job. It's all a trial of our faith. 

Have a good week! 

Elder Hill

 Tyler, Elder Craft & the Sisters raiding the church kitchen!

 Tyler & Elder Craft in their apartment ...

Tyler with his former companion, Elder Giles and Elder Giles new trainee

Airplane houses?

Hello everyone!!

Another week gone! I hit my 14 month mark this past week which is super weird. I have less than 10 months now so I'm getting into the single digits, what the heck...... 

The rain came back this week. It rained literally everyday haha. Looks like fall is almost here. 

So first off crazy story.. We got a call from the Elders out in Farmington which is out in the middle of nowhere, and they said that they had a YSA (young single adult) guy that they wanted us to teach. So we meet them at this guys house which was a 45 min drive out in the middle of the forest. The guy wasn't home and so they were like alright we will stop by someone else's place. So we follow them down the road and they pull off onto a tiny trail that lead into the forest. They then say that we have to walk the rest of the way up this hill into the forest where this guy apparently lived. So we start walking up this hill. We start getting closer and we see something through the trees and I was like, "that's a weird looking house." And then we keep getting closer and it turns out it isn't a house, but it is a huge freaking airplane! It is just this commercial airplane sitting in the middle of the forest! And the funny thing is that someone lives there! They had water and sewage pipes going up into the plane and they had steps that lead to the wing and you would walk on the wing to the door. It was crazy! The guy wasn't home that lived there, but we looked inside and all the seats were taken out and he had a nice little setup. It was so weird haha. It was like an episode of Lost or something!  There were airplane parts on the ground everywhere! So strange. 

This week we had some really sweet lessons! We met with this guy named Tyler for the first time and we were teaching him just on his porch and we taught him the Restoration. As we were teaching him, I quoted the First Vision and Tyler says, "dang I got the chills when you said that" and we were just like, "dude that's the Holy Ghost!" So he came to church that week and he is really interested in learning and coming back to church again! 

We had another classic Oregon lesson where we were teaching out in the rain. We met with Ben at the Beaverton transit center and we were teaching him the Plan of Salvation and it just started pouring rain. He said it didn't bother him so we sat on a bench in the rain and taught the Plan of Salvation.  It was a classic Oregon missionary experience haha.

We had another awesome lesson with our investigator Zach who is trying to make a lot of changes in his life and quit smoking. We had an amazing spiritual lesson with him and we asked him what we could do to help him overcome his addiction. He tossed me his lighter and cigarettes and told us to chuck 'em. It's amazing to see how God can help a person change their life so much to allow them to be so much happier. 

Another cool thing that happened was we gave a blessing to a recent convert. Elder Craft did the anointing and I did the blessing and after it was done he was like, "I could literally feel the pain leave my body as you were speaking Elder Hill. That was the craziest thing ever." So that was pretty cool. 

Hope you all have a great week!! Don't be afraid to send me a letter or somethin;) 

Elder Hill

P-day hike to Pittock Mansion in Portland

The orangutans were the best!

Hi everyone!

This week was crazy! On P-day we went to the zoo with the Sisters and one of our recent converts. It was super fun.  The orangutans were the best haha. 

This week we were so busy. We taught 30 lessons and found 8 new investigators! We met a lot of really interesting people. There was one person in particular that was really cool who had a crazy experience.... We met a guy who had a "death" experience where 5 years ago he overdosed, was in a coma in the hospital, and was "dead" for a short period of time. He had a dream during that time where an Angel walked him through his life and what he had done. He explained how he was like a "Spirit" and he was able to review his life with this angel speaking to him about it. He basically described the Spirit World and what he said lined up almost perfectly with the Plan of Salvation and what we teach. He said how through his experience that he believes God loves all of His children and none of us will be sent to "hell," but we will live in different levels of happiness. We were just like dude that's very similar to what we believe! And the thing that stood out to me the most that he said was, that as the Angel walked him through his life he said he didn't necessarily feel eternally damned for doing drugs or breaking the law of chastity. He said yes it definitely mattered because it made him unclean and he felt bad about it, but it didn't matter cause it already happened. He said the thing that pained him the most during that experience was when the Angel showed him the times that he made fun of people who believed in God and he tried to lead them away from that. He said that was by far the worst feeling he felt. The Angel asked him what he would do if he had a second chance, and then he woke up from his "coma". He said he knows that God exists and there is a heaven...... So then the next day during my studies I was studying Alma 36 about how Alma had a very similar experience. What I thought was interesting was that Alma never mentioned any very specific sin that he committed (he said he didn't keep the commandments as a whole).  The thing he was specific on was that he was "seeking to destroy the church of God" and also when he said "Yea, and I had murdered many of his children, or rather led them away unto destruction" other than this, Alma just gives a general overview that he didn't keep the commandments of God. I pondered that and thought how interesting that is, how both this man and Alma felt the worst knowing they "lead them away unto destruction". Definitely a testimony builder for me and how real the after life is. And also how important the things we do here in mortality are. 

Everything else is going great! We are trying to teach all of our investigators and get them baptized!.. The weather is super nice and we are just trying to get our Zone pumped up and working hard! 

Thanks for the support!

Love you all! 

Elder Hill

 Missionary work on Facebook!

Are you an Eagle or a Hog?

Hi everyone!

So this week was pretty good! Elder Craft and I had to give a training at Zone Conference on Tuesday and we didn't find out what we were training on until Monday night and so we were up until midnight planning it out haha but it went pretty well... 

Nothing else super exciting happened this week. We had been teaching a guy named Everett and he is 20 years old. He has high functioning autism and so he is pretty normal, but can be very child-like sometimes. We were teaching him this week a couple times and every time we asked him a question and he answered it right he would start doing a slow clap. Then throughout our lessons he would just randomly bow his head and start praying. He told his mom that he was going to church and sadly she said that she wasn't comfortable with that and he had to stop meeting with us. So we were super bummed about that.

We have been teaching another guy named Ben for the past month. He had no religious background at all and had never prayed before.  We met with him again this week and he said that God has answered so many of his prayers this past week! It was pretty cool, and he wants to be baptized! So we are working on that with him. 

Spiritual Thought: During studies, I was reading a talk about character and how you know the character of a person by the activities they do in their free time or when no one is looking. The speaker used a comparison of an eagle and a hog:

"He said: Let us take the eagle, for example. This bird works as hard and as efficiently as any other animal or bird in doing its daily work. It provides for itself and its young by the sweat of its brow, so to speak; but when its daily work is over and the eagle has time of its own to do just as it pleases, note how it spends its recreational moments. It flies in the highest realms of heaven, spreads its wings and bathes in the upper air, for it loves the pure, clean atmosphere and the lofty heights. On the other hand, let us consider the hog. This animal grunts and grubs and provides for its young just as well as the eagle; but when its working hours are over and it has some recreational moments, observe where it goes and what it does. The hog will seek out the muddiest hole in the pasture and will roll and soak itself in filth, for this is the thing it loves. People can be either eagles or hogs in their leisure time." I thought that was really cool! I think we would all much rather live the eagle life than the hog life! 

Have a good week! 

Elder Hill

Tyler & Logan (he was baptized a couple of weeks ago and is now moving to South Carolina)